The Tail of The Hemisphere Chile And Argentina

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.C29 1923

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NEW ENGLAND INSTITUT
OF TECHNOLOGY :
LEARNING RESOURCES CENTER

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GARPENTER’S
WORLD TRAVELS

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Familiar Talks About Countries
and Peoples

WitieehiiesAU THORSON THES POt AND
THE READER IN HIS HOME, BASED
ON THREE HUNDRED THOU-
SAND MILES OF TRAVEL
OVER THE GLOBE

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TESA OmRai de AE MISPHERE
CHILE AND ARGENTINA

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CHILE AND ARGENTINA

share between them the beauties of the Cordilleras, the mighty backbone
of the continent that separates the two republics and at Panama links
South America to our own land.

CARPENTER’S WORLD TRAVELS

ieee PAL ORT HE
miedviho beLe RE

CHILE AND ARGENTINA

BY

FRANK G. CARPENTER |
biti, FRge Ss. Passioniss ¢ stoi ne
MOUNT ST, JOSEPH

College Libr,

Wisthitiel tte UU STRAT LON S
FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS ~
AND TWO MAPS IN COLOUR

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLE PDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1925

NEW ENGLAND INSTITUTE
OF TECHNOLOGY
LEARNING RESOURCES CENTER

# 4. BO e354]

COPYRIGHT, 1923., BY FRANK G. CARPENTER.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, PRINTED IN THE

UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE
PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. ¥.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

N THE publication of this book on Chile and Argen-
tina, I wish to thank the Secretary of State for letters
which have given me the assistance of the official
representatives of our government in the countries

visited. I thank also our Secretary of Agriculture and
our Secretary of Labour for appointing me an Honorary
Commissioner of their Departments in foreign lands.
These credentials have been of the greatest value, making
available sources of information seldom open to the
ordinary traveller. To their Excellencies, the Ambas-
sadors of Chile and Argentina, who have honoured me
by reading in manuscript the chapters relating to their
respective countries, I desire to express my sincere ap-
preciation.

I acknowledge also the assistance and codperation of
Mr. Dudley Harmon, my editor, and of Miss Ellen
McB. Brown and Miss Josephine Lehmann, my associ-
ate editors, in the revision: of the notes dictated or
penned by me on the ground.

While most of the illustrations are from my own nega-
tives, these have been supplemented by photographs from
the United States Department of Agriculture, the National
City Bank of New York, the Publishers’ Photo Service, and

the Pan-American Union.
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CHAPTER

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CONTENTS

Just A WorpD BEFORE WE START .
CHILE’s ANDEAN GATEWAY .

IN THE NITRATE DESERT.

THE CHILE OF To-DAY.

YANKEE ENTERPRISE ON THE WEST COAST
THE NERVE CENTRE OF THE NATION

How THE REpuBLIc IS GOVERNED .
AMONG THE CHILENOS .

Bic FARMS OF THE CENTRAL VALLEY .
WINTER FRUITS FOR AMERICAN TABLES .
CONCEPCION AND THE LoTA MINES .

THE STORY OF THE ARAUCANIANS .
SouTH DEUTSCHLAND

THE RAILROAD BACKBONE OF CHILE .
THROUGH THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN .
THE SOUTHERNMOST CITY OF THE WORLD .
TIERRA DEL FUEGO .

IN THE FALKLAND ISLANDS .

Over THE ANDES BY RAIL .

A VINEYARD OASIS
ix

PAGE

102
114
121
129
139
147

CHAPTER
XXI
XXII

XXIII
O.e0)
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
Odes
SOLOS
XXXI
O88
XXXII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
KECK IX

CONTENTS

ACROSS THE PAMPAS

ARGENTINA AND THE UNITED STATES
COMPARED

Buenos AIRES

Hicu LIFE IN THE CAPITAL

WITH THE WORKERS

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC.

SETTLERS AND SWALLOWS .

Our OPpoRTUNITY IN ARGENTINA

A Day ON AN ESTANCIA

BEEF AND BUTTER FOR OuR MARKETS.

MAINLY ABOUT HorRsES

WHEAT LANDS OF THE PARANA

THE TERRIBLE Locust

THE WorRLpD’s SECOND SHEEP COUNTRY

THE CONDOR AND THE OSTRICH

THE NATIONAL SUGAR BowL .

LAND BARONS AT THE SEASIDE

ARGENTINE RAILWAYS

BuILDING A NEw EmpiRE .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

PAGE

155

159
164
172
181

188
195

203
214
224
232
239
244
249
256
260
266
274
281

280
293

EIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The beauties of the Cordilleras . . . Frontispiece

FACING PAGE
The Andean beast of burden att Le een 2
Pata Ast amen, 8m! Yona ss OR ey 3
Pedcrrdclamtncmatives 4 oc @ ©.) 22 Sie 3
ARE TOR POLAK ME Bo elie! i ey sl 3) we ee 6
Dieciiosouimeraters 2505 ie ee a) Td
meviinvmneenittates by, : Lee ee ia Ahk. Poe ds
‘Valparaiso harbour a a ie ieee a. eek
iamsiikeistSOlle somes Je. ere eit Lol) 1G
iopinsoOnarusoe suIstand... 20 5. 2. Veh) AO
Women street-car conductors CEE ee eee a eee
The Braden mines Raat es) sc wetter SO
AR MoMiiainoiiiones..< Lad.) Balpacié v.98 e500 830
ESA OCA CAC wee oh 46. 4 hi es a: SE ERI
Saniaco rom canta licial? 5 +s. len! gly a 9338
Perranee tO ants Uiicla 4 gt a 38
mice Ouiitaisormalt. ) 0) oe oe Pe etd 39
At the Chilean White House Ocal Apr 8S 6
CRIACC IAC Saree 0 ih me, 8) oo PO MAR eee 47
Pe reLeIPTess StiSwrase 8) 4d a IT, OE Ue) AF
The bread seller Re tee OGL US AP OBA
WaAILeM SOLNIe TO COUTC ee kk PG
mag@uieanmpeantver.. 7; = “erty tnoaett, «4: 4:62
euAciendameeenil weo Soe Al vi he. 03
tiewecntraluvalleys §f 4) fort oe yt 70

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Home of the Inquilino ee Ed oe Al
Mnithe market 70s 5 8S
Fruit-king. of Chile...) 2/2) 4 ye oO
Phe land. of orchards 4. 22) 4003002 ee ©
Coal mines under the sea”: 25 20 2 >see
‘Thecoxsearte yc ce eh ee en ee
Aralicanian. woman ¢.6 2 6 6) G2 eg ee
Indian cemetery™ ©. < °. 4° 4° A) Ge = ees:
An‘Aratcatiam home. 92°; , 22-27 2) See
The homestéadér™ 4 ..0 2%. -s 0 oe? eS
Valdiviae:..8 Oe 2 Os eee
Chileanilandscape: .° ©, :0 © -%-3e AGe ee
The rack and pinion railroad?) 7) eee ees
Trainload ofinitrates 2... > = See On
On'the Transandine Railway... =) ae Oo
The: Falls of, Laja 20 = 202) Sse ae eee ec
Cape Pillar. = 2... 7, Se ee
TheAlacalufes*.> —% 9: =) 2. 15.) eG
In:the Straitor Magellan) 24 ) 2) 7. we ©
Punta Arenass-3.— > ei, Mee ee Ter
‘Phe: boundary. trees 0". eee a ec
Ushuaia ST SM Pee a do tg)
The hunters £4 OO Ae Dees ee
Forests of ‘lierra:del: Puegos ars eek no
iPussock. grass. 9. 5. <5) so ieee cal ae eC)
Christ ofthe Andes 7) 37 23.) eee Tr
Argentine customs guard’a4) 9). eee eT 4
The old trail » 2 ed hl) SOR Ie ee nes 6
snow onthe Transandines\ 9. 0) eT
In the vineyard 2: We Sy ee Se" 2S me Tile
Mendoza; River. - 0st ee

Xli

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

pee Reneincocal (lemmas 08 ke hii yebieetpereul bala 147
Pvmcintlicimine pampas ¢ i |.” 1. stenrkieanetl $0
Peerage MercOUMCnD ee. ara as. le RAs se) 1B)
Pe GRACES Cr ACK Mares ral eb ehi et ascii) 158
Babe ene nde Meme Nea Ge Le ty ee ight $O
feesidenices in Buenos Aires”. 5. ce ed pe 166
The subway Pes ok he Viable 107
Pu aestate ee Ne eee eh oraz.
| DE SESS Bar ae on ee OOo a ema ® byl
Mimi eewateidte ee igre...) 7. 1. ves) wks oe esl 82
Mnerncusitialsschool |)... 30. 1c Bigs gaes183
rauninigrant some =." . +)...’ =e ae -ek190
Beach SAUNT o's. 2. Leah) ww ceved Sabattanee 21.90
The Avenida de Mayo Lp aes | Raita ela Meth LOY
The Argentine Capitol Ps gt Nae Wises Af SOO
Palaces of Recoleta Cemetery ns ea eee 100
Where immigrants arelodged. . ... ..-. .. 206
@atuciewayito. the lands) > 0-5: ec W.eleiipaieee 2200
Immigrant girls Pench oe’ Mita 9 ye) SAME. he see 207
Smt OWATCTIIDONL Geo) ba ess eR eIO
Pomericauumacninery at Work... .°: Wen Wala le ope ) a ATT
ine bie-wheeledswagons ws Seba Sy me 214
een -Dricca stocks wae ii #5. 20M, sete 215
ra eAlerts) AOY ye tel od (6222
On the estancia oy Cee ee irene 7
In the cattle corral RPO face RR eet. iis 2 1.220
Beer Of alten ee Rare Pe ere bese le yn 220
TOAGINRAUEEL ACT IMEWAYOIK, of. 7 8 227
Pec kite Station 6 2 oe Ge tn er. 230
PEERAGE et ee i or ne ik we i230
iierea cr Oman en OTN ah eh BSI

Xili

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Atithe horse'sale-% « ©. » /:., Se eg
Thoroughbreds. 24% 2, \. a ee
Up the Parana. 2
Patagonian Jandscape; =. =. 1) 79 ere =
Adhreshitig wie wks ke ee So ee
The grain docks , aun SNe A ee
Afi outdoor theatre... ... © <=. <7) e276
Afgentinesheepe2 4%. sia a. cf) (4) ECR enemy
At.the'gramsport =... 5 24. 1) een ee
Opening up new landsi,.=... -. ne ee ee
Herding the flock. «2 2t=s—Ss. -) 9057) Gee 4
In the;wooltmarket 4.0 2. L612), (s) a ae 25
‘Phe Pu ana CO Siam lel Re ee
‘Phe: Andean:condom:—. .. (2 > Japiteow) eee 50)
Sheep lands'of thesouth? .. ».) 23000 a) Weeapeeeees
Influcunats so. A ee ee ee
Indians of Corrientes =". 790s ee. Se ees
The road. to.the.west, "<0 =. “eal eee eee
AbMar.del’Plata CAs" ai4 2 ee ee 2 TL
On thei Rambla=2.. +. 7.084, 95 72 ee
Open-air eran storages: 92. aeons
‘Lhe*wood: burner) "<0 32) i eo
ihhe: Ketiro:station | 2 §2 2.2 aw uta SO
hnesataucariastree se a. ee ee eee ee 7,
MAPS
North and South Americas. 0 2) SaaS
Ghiléand "Argentina 2) (eae ee nO)

XiV

fhe Orel Ey EMISPHERE
CHILE AND ARGENTINA

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

CHILE AND ARGENTINA

CHAPTER’!
JUST A WORD BEFORE WE START

HE travels upon which these talks are based

form a part of two journeys I have made around

the South American continent. In each case |

started at Panama and went leisurely south-
ward down the Pacific coast, with long tours inland from
the principal ports to see the countries and peoples. Much
of the time was spent in the tops of the Andes, and it was
from the high plateau of Bolivia that I came down the
arid slope of the Andes and began my trip across the
great desert of Chile to its chief seaport, Antofagasta.
From there I turned northward to the rainless city of
Iquique, and passed back and forth over the immense ni-
trate fields which so enrich the farms of the world. Moving
southward again, | visited the various cities along the coast
to Valparaiso, whence I went inland to the central valley
of Chile and traversed it from one end to the other.

At Concepcién I took ship for the Strait of Magellan,
passing through the dangerous and intricate windings
of Smyth’s Channel, skirting northern Tierra del Fuego,
and making my way two hundred miles eastward to the
Falkland Islands, whence I steamed north to Buenos Aires
to begin my travels in the Argentine Republic.

\

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

In the other journey I spent more time in the interior of
the two countries, revisiting the deserts and the farming
regions of Chile, devoting a part of my time to the capital,
Santiago, and then going across the Andes by rail to
Buenos Aires.

My travels in Argentina were made by boat, by rail, and
by automobile. I have been in nearly every part of that
country including the foothills of the Andes, the deserts
of Patagonia, the long river valleys, the vast pampas, and
the fertile corn lands of Entre Rios.

The sole object of these trips was to get the infor-
mation comprised in these talks, and my reader has been
ever before me. I have looked upon him as my friend, and
have written my notes as though we were chatting to-
gether, out on the porch in the summer, or perhaps about
the fire in the winter, without any other object than to
reproduce the pictures as they passed before my eyes,
For this reason the notes are presented as they came hot
from my pen, with only the slight revision here and there
needed to make them accord with changing conditions.
If they can give as much pleasure in the reading as I have
had in the writing | shall feel that my work has been well
worth the time and labour it has entailed.

The bare, grim walls of the Andes rising behind Antofagasta and the
surrounding desert contain some of the world’s richest deposits of iron, tin,
copper, and nitrates, and have made the city the chiet Pacific port be-
tween Valparaiso and Panama.

“One of the reasons mining operations in the Andes are so expensive Is
the scarcity of fuel. 1 have frequently seen stacks of the only wood avail-
able, twigs and branches of stunted trees. Coal has to be imported.”

When weary, the Ilama, the beast of burden of the Andes of northern-

most Chile, lies down and nothing

will get him up till his pack is removed.

Ee

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a Se EEE

CHAPTER II
CHILE’S ANDEAN GATEWAY

HAVE just taken a mighty slide from the roof of the
world to the level of the sea. I have come from the
tops of the Andes, in Bolivia, to the shores of the
Pacific Ocean in Chile, and am now writing in Anto-
fagasta, the chief port of one of the richest though most
barren parts of the earth. Antofagasta lies halfway
down the South American desert. It is twenty-four
hundred miles from Panama and two days and more from
the great port of Valparaiso. Though it belongs to Chile,
it forms the chief gateway to Bolivia and the mighty
treasure vaults of the Andes. It is also the gateway to
the nitrate fields and to the many other wonders of this arid
region. Through it passes most of the borax used by man-
kind, and out of it come vast quantities of copper and tin.
Within one hundred and sixty-two miles of Antofagasta
is Chuquicamata, where the Chile Copper Company owns
enormous copper deposits which have produced as much
as seven million pounds a month. Farther north are the
Uyuni tin mines and still farther inland the tin of Potosi
and Oruro. A river of minerals flows through this port
and the stream will increase in volume with the develop-
ment of the great deposits of the interior. Antofagasta
is also the starting point of the new Transandine road
which is to cross the continent by way of Uyuni, Tupiza,
and the Argentine system.
3

THE PAIL: OF THEsHEMISPHERE

The port, which is growing like thistles on the mountain
farms of Virginia, looks more like a town of the great
American desert than anything | have seen in South
America. The houses are mostly of wood, roofed with gal-
vanized iron. The streets are wide and many of them are
unpaved. The characteristic sights of the Andes have dis-
appeared. There are no blanketed Indians and no llamas;
wagons, carts, and cabs have taken their places. The
town is cosmopolitan. Moving through its streets, one
hears every language spoken and is jostled by British and
Germans, Austrians and French; but most of the people
are Chileans.

Though the harbour of Antofagasta is poor, it is filled
with shipping. The wharves are heaped high with goods.
There are stacks of Oregon pine, piles of bags of American
flour, and cords of steel rails and structural steel made
by our steel mills. The place is the busiest of all the ports
between Valparaiso and Panama, and sends northward
through the Panama Canal valuable cargoes of the nitrate,
borax, copper, tin, and other minerals from the regions at
its back.

My route from La Paz, in Bolivia, to Oruro was the
same | took years ago, when I rode for three days over the
plateau on the top of a mail wagon. We pelted the mules’
ears with stones and kept them on the gallop from day-
light to dark. It was so cold we almost froze at the rude
inns-of the highlands. My journey this time was made
in comfort by rail, and the trip from the tops of the
Andes to Antofagasta took only two days. Our train had
Bolivian millionaires, English, Australian, and American
commercial travellers, miners of a half-dozen different
nationalities, and a number of tourists. We stopped for six

4

CHILE’S ANDEAN GATEWAY

hours at Oruro and there got sleeping compartments; there
were dining cars, and we travelled in comparative ease.

This time I found travel much cheaper. Our sleeping
berths cost us three dollars a night, and the first-class
passenger rate was about twenty-four dollars, with a
charge for baggage of about two cents per pound. The
price for meals on the diner was a dollar and a half in
gold, with an extra charge for mineral water about twice
that of the United States.

The high plateau of Bolivia is a semi-desert country
about five hundred miles long and of varying width. Its
only vegetation is half-starved grass and dry bushes, but it
feeds thousands of sheep, alpacas, and llamas, and we had
animal life in sight almost all of the way down to Oruro.
Now and then we passed an Indian village; and always
there were the scattered huts of the Aymaras spotting the
plain, round in shape, many with roofs made of mud
bricks symmetrically laid.

At one of the stations where we stopped to pick up our
dining car we saw a great drove of llamas. They had
brought fuel to the railroad for shipment to La Paz, and
were about to start back with a load of merchandise to a
town in the hills. The fuel was what I might call Bolivian
cordwood. It consisted of the limbs of stunted ever-
greens, each as big around as your finger. They had
been grubbed from the mountains and packed up in
bundles about three feet square and two feet long.

Farther down the road we saw great piles of peat-moss,
another fuel that grows in the Andes. It is of a woody,
resinous nature, and when lighted gives out a great heat.
It grows on top of the ground in round patches ranging in
size from the diameter of a washbasin to that of a tub.

y)

HEAT OC Fae Peo SE

Along the railroad we could see the piles of English or
Australian coal used by the engines. This was in the
shape of briquettes stacked in regular order. They were
corded up, as it were, and around the edges of the pile |
noticed that a white band had been painted. I asked the
reason and was told that it was to prevent the Indians
from stealing the coal.

Our ride across the Bolivian plateau was through a
country as smooth asa floor. The plateau is covered with
stones. It is supposed to have been at one time a vast
inland sea, and sea shells are often found upon it. Profes-
sor Agassiz said that the water level was three or four
hundred feet higher than the level of the present plateau.
If so, it has all disappeared, as to-day the only large bodies
of water found there are in the lakes, Titicaca and Aulla-
gas. The latter is the home of many wild fowl, and the
region about it is filled with birds of various kinds, in-
cluding wild ducks and flamingoes.

Oruro, six hundred and fifty-three miles from Anto-
fagasta, is a thriving town, twelve thousand feet above
the sea in the heart of the Bolivian desert. It has about
thirty thousand people, and it carries on a great trade with
the tin-mining regions of the interior. Its population
rises and falls as the price of tin goes up or down. The
town has a government palace, a theatre, a public library,
and a mineral museum. It has many business houses and
some very good stores. The streets are paved with cob-
bles, and a rickety carriage jolted me from one end of the
town to the other at a cost of five dollars.

Leaving Oruro I took the railroad down to the sea. The
trip is over one of the most remarkable routes of the Andes.
The greater part of the way is bleak and uninteresting,

6

Next to the United States, Chile is the world’s largest producer of
borax, which is found in great lakes high up in the Andes. The peak
shown here is an extinct volcano.

CHILE’S ANDEAN GATEWAY

but there are several smoking volcanoes, and also salt
lakes with green islands apparently floating upon them.
After crossing the Chilean boundary we came to the big
borax lakes. These are owned by the borax trust, and
supply the greater part of that mineral for the whole world.
There are, in fact, only three or four places on earth where
borax is found in large quantities. There are some de-
posits on the plateau of Thibet in Asia and others in
Death Valley, California. As | looked at the Chilean lakes
they seemed to be covered with snow. This ‘“‘snow”’ is
the borax that rises to the surface and forms a blanket or
crust on the water so firm that men can walk on it. It
looks so like ice that one feels like stopping the train for a
skate. In places the crust had been broken and the float-
ing cakes were being taken out by the workmen to be pre-
pared for the market in the refineries near by. Some of
the borax was as clean as the whitest of spun silk; some
was as dirty as the snow on a Pittsburgh sidewalk. We
were over an hour travelling along the edge of Lake
Ascotan, which is twenty-four miles long and the greatest
reservoir of borax known.

Shortly after leaving Ascotan we came to the highest
pass on the railroad. We were thirteen thousand feet
above the sea, and found it bitterly cold at the crossing.
The mountains on each side were dusted with snow, while
beyond them were several great peaks covered with
glaciers. On the way we passed the two mighty volcanoes
of San Pedro and San Paulo, or, as we should call them,
St. Peter and St. Paul. From St. Peter, which is now
active, there rises a constant column of smoke. Its sides
are covered with lava that looks as fresh as though it had
just come from the crater. This lava is broken into mil-

7

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

lions of fragments. It extends for several miles along the
slope of the mountains in plain view of the railroad.

St. Peter is one of the most symmetrical of the world’s
mighty volcanoes. It is as beautifully shaped as Fuji-
yama in Japan, Mount Cook in New Zealand, or Mount
Moyon in Luzon. The peak rises directly from the plain.
The plain is level, with only a few pebbles or boulders here
and there. It is perfectly smooth except for these enor-
mous windrows of lava. The rock looks as though it had
been broken into pieces by the hammers of giants and
piled up by some intelligent force. It is a wonderful sight.

The Andes are said to be the youngest of the mountain
masses shoved up out of the sea; and they are in many
respects the most wonderful of highlands. From Panama
to Patagonia they form a great geological garden such as
can be seen in no other part of the world. The combina-
tion of desert and rocks and sky gives scenic effects beyond
description. Parts of the Andes reveal how the earth was
made and the terrible throes involved in its creation.
In some places they are more desert-like than the wilds
of Arabia or the Sahara and one seems to be upon the
very bedrock of the world. Again it is as though Mother
Earth, in her original nakedness, were laid out before
you upon the dissecting table. The walls of broken lava of
which I have spoken are perhaps three hundred feet high.
The stones are dark red and are piled in regular, colossal
heaps, forming a mass a hundred times the volume of our
excavations at Panama. Here the volcanoes have vomited
sand; there they have thrown out deposits of rock the
size of a walnut, and farther on they have cast up
mighty semi-metallic boulders.

The scenery around St. Peter and St. Paul is magni-

8

CHILE’S ANDEAN GATEWAY

ficent. Right between them is a low crater as symmetri-
cally shaped as though cut from the deep red stone by a
sculptor, while hard by are the crystal springs that supply
Antofagasta with water. The water comes from reser-
voirs on the roof of the continent, higher than the top of
Pike’s Peak. The lake is known as the Siloli Spring and
has a flow of six thousand tons of water per day. The
pipes carrying it down to the coast are over a hundred
and ninety miles long. Leaving Bolivia, the whole way
down to the sea is through a desert. The only green
spots are the railroad stations watered by this pipe line
from Siloli Spring. |

The mining town of Huanchaca is the centre for the
Pulcayo silver mines now owned by a French-Chilean
company. These mines, which are said to have given the
world nearly five thousand tons of silver within the last
twenty-five years, are still yielding enormously. The
company uses electricity, getting its force from the Yura
River, which develops three thousand horsepower. The
mines have twelve miles of tunnels and employ several
thousand workmen.

We stopped at Ollague, where a branch line runs off to
the Collahuasi copper mines, reputed among the richest
in South America. This branch line reaches a height of
fifteen thousand eight hundred and nine feet, while that
to Potos{, north of Uyuni, is at one point fifteen thousand
eight hundred and fourteen feet above the sea. These
roads are higher than any of the other railroads of South
America except the Morococha branch of the Central of
Peru. That line has an altitude of fifteen thousand eight
hundred and sixty-five feet, exceeding the Potosi line by
fifty feet.

9

CHAPTERsIII
IN THE NITRATE DESERT

AM ina land that yields more dollars than the valleys

of the Nile, the Euphrates, or the Ganges. Neverthe-

less, it is as barren as the Sahara. It has not a plant,

a tree, a blade of grass, or any green thing. It isa
Jand upon which rains never fall, and where one often has
to go a hundred miles for a drink of pure water. It is a
land of rocks, stones, and sand, and salty particles that
reflect the rays of the tropical sun, inflaming the eyes.
It contains the great nitrate belt that runs through the
desert and along this west coast from below Antofagasta
to the Peruvian boundary.

For several generations these fields have made Chile
richer than any other South American country and during
the World War the demand for nitrates so increased that
the exports amounted to about forty-five dollars to each
person in the Chilean Republic. These rich deposits not
only pay from sixty to eighty per cent. of all government
expenses, but yield fortunes to those who exploit them.

Antofagasta, where I am now, is one of the chief nitrate
ports. From it a syndicate, known as the Nitrate
Agencies, Limited, exports in the neighbourhood of a
billion pounds every year. Its ships are constantly
loading at the nitrate ports and sailing for the United
States, Europe, or far-off Japan. The syndicate has con-
siderable British capital, but it is under American manage-

10

IN THE NITRATE DESERT

ment and its methods are entirely American. The largest
owners are W. R. Grace and Company, of New York and
London, a firm that has nitrate deposits and factories
scattered throughout the desert from Antofagasta to
Peru. There are, however, some seventy companies en-
gaged in this business.

Nitrate of soda is one of the richest of fertilizers and
has doubled the crops of many an American farm. The
United States, which takes about one half of the total
production, is now buying more than two hundred
million pounds a month. Among the other large con-
sumers are Germany, Great Britain, France, Holland, and
Belgium, also Japan and the Hawaiian Islands.

When taken out of the ground and purified, the product
looks just like white salt. It is made up of small crystals,
or grains, and it is in this shape that it goes to the inarkets.
It is put up in two-hundred-pound bags, which have to
be lightered from shore to ships.

The beds of “salitre,”’ as the Chileans call it, begin at
some distance below Antofagasta and run northward to
beyond the port of Iquique, a distance of nearly five
hundred miles. They stop just beyond the international
boundary, but the deposits of Peru are of such low grade
as not to be worth the working.

The richest fields lie in the deserts. They are at an
altitude of several thousand feet above the level of the sea,
on the western slope of a range of hills, and from twenty to
a hundred miles back from the coast. The nitrate belt
is seldom more than ten miles in width.

The mineral is not evenly distributed. Much of it is in
pockets, although one field covers an area of more than one
hundred square miles. Others are confined to a few hun-

I]

THES TAIL) OF THES HEMISPHERE

dred acres, and the purity of the deposits varies as much
as their size. Asa rule, the nitrate is close to the surface,
cropping out here and there, and seldom extending for
more than twenty feet below the level of the desert.

There are many different theories as to the origin of
these deposits. One is that this part of Chile was once
the floor of an inland sea, and that the nitrates were formed
by the decaying of seaweed. Another hypothesis is that
the ammonia which arose from the vast beds of guano in
the islands off the west coast was carried by the winds to
the mainland, where it condensed and united with the
other chemicals in the earth to form these beds. A third
supposition is that electrical discharges in the Andes com-
bined with the air so as to make nitric acid, which acted
on the soil and formed nitrate of soda.

None of these theories is satisfactory, and yet the scien-
tists have little better to offer. Dr. Waiter S. Tower of
Chicago University says the salts were produced in a great
lagoon, once the home of a world of bird life. The lagoon
was shallow and the birds waded through it and fed on its
shores. Their droppings formed guano, which, as evapora-
tion went on, combined with certain elements in the water
and soil to make nitrate of soda. At any rate, the nitrates
are here, preserved by the dryness of the desert, which has
no moisture to leach them out.

Where the mining is done, the land looks as though it
had been ploughed by giants. The earth lies in mammoth
clods of all shapes and sizes beyond which are nothing but
bleak stretches of sand. There is no sign of vegetation or
life of any kind. The rock is in some places white and
in others yellow, gray, lemon-coloured, or green. The
nitrate lies in strata sometimes well under the surface.

12

INSEE E NIPRATE DESERT

The method of getting it out is to bore a hole a foot in
diameter through the layers of sand and rock and blow
it out with blasting powder. The powder is made out of
nitrate obtained on the spot. The only other chemicals re-
quired are charcoal and sulphur. The explosion breaks
up the earth for a radius of forty feet around the charges,
which are laid in rows so that the mining can be done in
trenches. The rock is dug up with picks and crowbars.
It is broken into lumps of such size that they can be loaded
upon cars and taken to the mills and further reduced by
machinery.

Nitrate of soda is seldom found pure in nature, and the
best of the deposits contain only from forty to sixty per
cent. If the ore has more than twenty per cent. nitrate
it is called caliche, and if less than that it is costra. The
costra lies on top, and the caliche is usually found under-
neath. Before the material can be used it must be refined
and all the earth and rock removed. The laws require
that the salts exported must be at least ninety-five per
cent. pure.

Since I first visited this region, there are many more
oficinas, as the nitrate factories are called, and the output
has been quadrupled. The average oficina is a collection
of great buildings with tall smokestacks rising above them.
It has thousands of dollars’ worth of costly machinery,
vast tanks for boiling the nitrate rock, and crushers like
those of a smelter that break it to pieces. It has settling
vats, in which the liquor containing the pure nitrate of
soda is left until it has dropped its burden of valuable
salts, and also machines for bagging the salts and loading
them on cars that go down to the seacoast by rail.

Some of the largest plants cost millions of pesos and

13

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

employ hundreds of men. Some have an output of a half
million pounds per day, and there is one which markets in
a good year as much as two hundred million pounds.

The work of the big nitrate factory is scientifically done.
The fineness of crushing and the time of boiling are care«
fully regulated. The boiling tanks are usually in a build-
ing high above the ground. Each is big enough to form
a bathtub for an elephant. It is equipped with coils of
steam pipe that keep the temperature of the fluid at the
desired point. The caliche, or nitrate ore, is carried up an
inclined railway and dumped into the tank. Then the
water containing a certain portion of nitrate of soda in
solution is allowed to flow from tank to tank, so as to act
to the best advantage on the salts within. Three or four
hours of boiling is necessary to make the liquid of the
required density, and when it is run off it looks like a pale
molasses or thick lemon syrup. The liquid now goes into
the crystallizing tanks, where it lies for ten or fifteen days.
During this time the soda all drops to the bottom, and the
tank is half full of what looks like pure-white sugar or salt.
The mother liquor which floats on top is drawn off and
returned to the boiling tank to be used over and over again,
and the salt is shovelled out upon drying floors where it
remains until the moisture has all disappeared. It
is now ready for use and is bagged and shipped down to
the coast.

A valuable by-product of the nitrate factories is iodine,
the export of which is regulated so as to insure fair prices, as
the supply is said to exceed the demand. The casks in
which the iodine is shipped are covered with green hides,
which shrink and thus prevent leakage.

The experts, particularly the Americans, have intro-

14

The nitrate deposits lie about twenty feet below the surface, and are
mined by boring a hole into the ground and inserting a charge of dynamite.
After blasting the salt rock is dug out with crowbars and picks.

Nitrate is refined by melting the crude rock and then allowing the salt

to settle in huge vats. As the water is drawn off, the snow-white chemical
is left to dry.

INGEGESNITRATE: DESERT.

duced improved systems that promise to revolutionize the
work of the oficinas. Before the perfection of the hydro-
electric extraction of nitrogen from the air, the Chilean
desert was practically without competition, for it furnished
ninety-nine per cent. of the world’s nitrates. Now up-to-
date methods, introduced by leading American firms and
being rapidly adopted by the other oficinas, seem likely to
put the nitrates of Chile beyond competition from the prod-
uct taken out of the air. Specially designed machinery re-
duces labour at mine, leaching plant, and shipping point.
Furthermore, the final recovery under the new processes
is Over ninety per cent.

In my talks with the nitrate experts of Chile, I have
learned much about the extent of the fields and their
future. The Antofagasta manager of the Nitrate Agencies,
Limited, estimates that there is enough in sight to supply
the world for eighty years more at the present rate of
consumption, and there are others who say the nitrate
fields will last for more than two centuries. There are
three provinces with deposits estimated at over five
hundred billion pounds. Other estimates are lower, some
claiming that there are now left only about two hundred
billion pounds. These estimates do not take into account
the new fields which are sure to be found, nor the possibili-
ties of working over the dumps about the oficinas, which
still contain a large percentage of nitrates.

Said one of the big oficina managers to me:

“Our profits are a question of small savings. The
difference of a cent in the cost of the reduction of one
hundred pounds would mean a profit of at least twelve
hundred dollars a month. We must watch everything,
especially the matter of labour. Our workmen have to

15

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

come from the outside, and their wages are high for this
part of the world. The present average is about two
dollars a day, although boys are paid less than one dollar.
There are altogether about forty thousand men employed
in the reduction of nitrate and some of the larger works
have from eight hundred to a thousand each. We have to
provide houses for the men, and also heat, light, and water,
although the cost of these is deducted from their wages.”

The water for the nitrate works comes in pipes for a
long distance over the desert, and all kinds of food have
to be imported. Every company has its own store and
pays its wages in blanks instead of in money. Each
blank is the size of a poker chip. It has its value marked
on it and it can be used at the company stores. It rep-
resents so much money and the workman can cash
it at any time. The stores are run at a profit and the
prices are high. Flour brings more than four dollars a
hundred pounds, eggs ten cents apiece, all cuts of meat
fifty cents a pound, and beans about six dollars a bushel.
Coal oil costs about twenty cents a gallon and coal over
one cent a pound. The coal is used for cooking only.
Most of it comes from southern Chile, although some is
shipped in from England and Australia. The larger
oficinas have schools for their men, and hospitals and
physicians are available.

The nitrate business is the backbone of Iquique, the
foundation stone of Antofagasta, and the mainstay of
Taltal, Mejillones, Pisagua, Chanaral, and Tocopilla,
which are towns of smaller size. Iquique depends en-
tirely on it and, next to Valparaiso and Antofagasta, is
the most thriving seaport of the country. It lies on the
edge of the sea under bare, ragged hills. For a hundred

16

IN THE NITRATE DESERT

miles back and around there is nothing but desert. The
country has not one blade of grass, except that fed by the
fresh water brought to Iquique in a pipe line seventy-five
miles long. Nevertheless, there are over seventy thousand
inhabitants. The city has wide streets and an electric
car line; it has its newspapers, a theatre, moving-picture
shows, and an English club. It has good stores and
markets and, although nothing but nitrate of soda is
produced and every article used must come from abroad,
the people live about as well as those of any other South
American city.

To-day most of the nitrate works are owned by stock
companies, and nearly all are paying big dividends.
Some have doubled and trebled in value since they were
organized. When I visited the Agua Santa years ago,
its capital was only three million dollars. When that
stock was paid in, it was at the rate of ten pesos per share.
Since then it has sold for thirty-four times that amount.
Some of the biggest oficinas have paid for themselves in
three years, and not a few have given stock dividends of
one hundred and even two hundred per cent.

All of the nitrate fields originally belonged to the govern-
ment, and have been sold at auction to the highest bidders,
the government taking its share of the revenue through
the duty charged upon every bag exported. The receipts
have been so large that they have led to extravagant
expenditures on the part of the officials, and there are
wise men in Chile who claim that such an easy-come,
easy-go income is bad for the country. They say Chile
would be far better off if the people had to pay taxes as in
other countries instead of having these nitrate beds pro-
vide from two thirds to four fifths of the public expenses.

fl

CHARTERS.
THE CHILE OF TO-DAY

ALPARAISO is one of the chief ports of the

world. It is the New York of the west coast of

South America, and does more business on the

Pacific than any other port except San Francis-
co. The Panama Canal has greatly stimulated its trade
with both the United States and Europe, and the Chileans
have been quick to recognize their opportunity in improv-
ing this, their country’s principal gateway.

Everybody knows of Valparaiso, but few realize, just
where it is. It is about as far south of the Panama Canal
as Boston is distant from Salt Lake City, and it lies in the
central part of the coast of this long republic of Chile.
The city is about thirteen hundred miles north of the
Strait of Magellan. It is the port nearest the capital of
the republic, and also the main commercial entrance to
the great central valley which forms the chief agricultural
region of the country. The town, which has more people
than Denver, is rapidly growing. It has gained enormous-
ly since the earthquake in 1906 and, notwithstanding many
similar disasters in the past, the people go on building as
though sure there will be no earthquakes in the future.

Valparaiso has suffered many calamities. Founded
only fifty-one years after Columbus discovered America, it
had countless adventures with pirates before the earth-
quake of 1730 demolished the settlement and its forti-

18

The statue of Arturo Pratt, hero of the war with Peru in 1870, stands at
the edge of the harbour of Valparaiso, the busiest port on South America’s
west coast, and gateway to the rich central valley of Chile.

Fresh milk is sold direct from the cow on some streets of Valparaiso.
The calf is taken along to keep her mother good-humoured, but muzzled so
as not to steal the stock in trade.

On Robinson Crusoe’s Island, wild fruits are growing to-day that are de-
scended from those planted by the castaway, Alexander Selkirk. It is
now the site of a penal colony and the fishing ground of lobstermen.

Hew ILE OF TO-DAY

fications. It was soon rebuilt, but another earthquake
occurred in 1822. Two decades after that a fire burned
up a million dollars’ worth of property, and a little later
another fire cost the town five million dollars. Then it
was bombarded by the Spaniards, who destroyed property
to the value of ten millions of dollars, and on top of the
whole came the earthquake of 1906, which is said to have
cost one hundred and twenty million dollars. Besides
the property losses, there were about three thousand per~
sons killed and at least one hundred thousand were made
homeless. The entire city along the edge of the sea was
laid low and yet that part is now covered with the best
business blocks. Wide avenues have been made and the
city is larger and handsomer than ever. A great part of
Valparaiso has been reclaimed from the sea by filling in
with earth and rock from the highlands. This was done
before the earthquake, and since then the new building
has been upon similar foundations. Many of the new
streets are so high that one has to go down steps to get
into older buildings still standing.

Extensive improvements of the harbour, such as break-
waters and quays, have been in progress continuously in
recent years, but many large ships still anchor at a dis-
tance from the shore and their goods and passengers are
landed from small boats. The bay about which Valparaiso
is built is shaped like a half moon and makes a beautiful
setting for the town, which rises almost straight up from
the shore, on an amphitheatre of hills so steep that the
houses are built upon terraces and the people go from
level to level on cog railroads. There is one of these every
few blocks, and I could pick them out with my eyes as we
came in on the steamer. At night the view from a ship

19

THE TAIL OFS THESHEMISPHERE

is especially beautiful. The houses on the hills are ablaze
with lights and in addition there are electric lights on the
streets, making the whole look like a maze of great fire-
flies.

The moment we came into port to-day our ship was
boarded by fleteros, or boatmen, clamouring to take us and
our trunks to the shore. I had already been posted as to
the prices and arranged with one at a cost of nine dollars
in our money to take me through the custom house and to
the hotel. A moment later my trunks had been lowered
over the side and | was in a boat moving through the busy
harbour. We had to watch out for the launches, which
were flying this way and that by the score; we passed huge
barges of goods being towed to and fro, and darted be-
tween many great sailing craft, some of which were loaded
with lumber from California and Puget Sound. We
went near one Chilean man-of-war, then slipped under the
shadow of a dry dock containing a steamer, and finally
came to the wharf just opposite the Intendencia or Gover-
nor’s palace. It took but a short time to go through the
customs, and a little later we were driving through the
city over streets paved with asphalt and lined with modern
stores.

The things that interested me most at first sight were the
street cars. These are of two stories with a second tier of
seats on the roof. There is an iron stairway at the back
leading to the roof, and one can ride through the town as
though on an elevated railway. These seats are the best
for a view of the city. Besides, the fare is less for a ride
on top than in the closed car below. I paid only one cent
of our money, and the fare inside was but two cents.
Notwithstanding these low rates, I understand that the

20

THE CHILE OF TO-DAY

line pays big dividends and is said to clear about one
million dollars a year.

The conductors are an interesting feature of this car
line. They are women; a very few of them are pretty
young girls, but the great majority will never see thirty or
forty again. The woman conductors were employed on
the cars at the time of the war with Peru, when all the men
were sent north to fight. The women took their places,
and have held them to this day. I am told that they are
very good, and more honest than the men. Still, the
company keeps a check upon its conductors by making
them give each passenger a ticket which Is collected by an
inspector. The companies also have detectives whom the
girls nickname Judases, to see that all pay their fare and
that no fares are stolen. The conductresses wear black
sailor hats and dark dresses. They have white aprons, in
the pockets of which they carry their money and tickets,
and strapped round their waists are little boxes for the
checks they give the passengers.

Another good feature of the car lines is the use of con-
spicuous numbers to indicate their routes. This is in
accordance with a custom prevailing in some European
countries, which should be more generally adopted in the
United States.

When I ended my ride I was near one of the cog rail-
roads leading to the upper part of the city. As I entered
the station I had another surprise. It was a woman who
opened the turnstile and gave me my ticket, and she did
her job quite as well as a man. She took my money and
then shut me inside a cage like that of an elevator. She
rang a bell, and a moment later I was high above the
roofs of the buildings along the shore, with a magnificent

21

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

view of the ocean below me. | could see the harbour with
its shipping and hundreds of small boats at anchor, while
away off at one side, around the end of the bay, was the
town of Vifia del Mar, the summer resort of the Chileans.
In January, February, and March the Chileans go to the
coast to get cool. Vifia del Mar is the Newport and Atlan-
tic City of the west coast. It has hundreds of luxurious
villas like those near Paris, and all the accompaniments of
a city of pleasure, such as clubs, golf, lawn tennis, and
football. There is a mile track where the Chileans bet
on their favourite horses, and where races are run every
day throughout the season. Indeed, the whole town looks
like one of the great spas of Europe. Most of the houses
are of French architecture; and many of them would cost,
if built in our country, from fifty to one hundred thousand
dollars each. Not a few have beautiful gardens, with
hedges of roses, great beds of geraniums, palms, and other
tropical plants.
Walking down from the hills of Valparaiso to my hotel,
I observed many other things that reminded me of south-
ern Europe. The street cries were like those of Naples or
Madrid. Peddlers with baskets of vegetables, fruit, or
fish on their heads were calling their wares. The bread
wagon was a horse with a great basket on each side of his
back, and I saw a woman on a corner who was selling
milk fresh from the cow. The cow had a calf standing
beside it, because she would not give down her milk —
unless her baby were present. The calf wore a cloth
muzzle, and looked lean and lonesome. I bought a glass
of milk for a nickel.
A little farther on I stopped at a bookstore. The clerk
spoke English and German and the books were in half-a-
22

When all the Chilean men went north to fight in the war with Peru,
women took the place of the street car conductors and have held the jobs
ever since. Most of the cars are double-deckers,

American enterprise in Chile is responsible for the opening up of some
of the greatest copper deposits in the world. The Braden mines at Sewell
are a part of the Guggenheim properties and have yielded rich returns.

THE CHILE OF TO-DAY

dozen different languages. Valparaiso is a cosmopolitan
city. Most of its business is done by foreigners, and there
are foreign churches, foreign clubs, and foreign charitable
institutions. There is a branch of the Y. M. C. A. and
one of the Salvation Army, and a British hospital.

The town is cooler than Santiago. It grows quite as
fast. The harbour plans when completed will give a
space for safe anchorage equal to about two hundred
acres. This will provide for the entry of almost two thou-
sand vessels with a total of seven million tons. A break-
water of a thousand feet and a quay wall about twice as
long are planned; also coal wharves, new customs house
and warehouse buildings, and modern equipment for load-
ing and unloading goods.

For a month I have been travelling through the northern
part of Chile. I have visited port after port, and yet here
at Valparaiso I am only a little more than halfway down
the coast. Chile is the longest country on earth in pro-
portion toits width. Beginning at Cape Horn, it stretches
its way northward like a snake along the western slopes
of the Andes for a distance of twenty-seven hundred
miles. It is three times as long as Egypt, which runs for
nine hundred miles through the desert. Let us suppose
that the Chilean snake is a rattler and that the islands off
the southernmost coast are the rattles. Then the button
would be the rocks of Cape Horn, and the fangs of the
rattlesnake would be the river Sama where Chile ends at
the Peruvian boundary. This Chilean snake is so long
that if you should lay it on the United States from east
to west with the button at Boston, its tongue might lick
the great Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, or if you
should start it crawling eastward, beginning at Cleveland,

23

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

it might go on to New York, and bending southward
reach Panama before its rattles had left the city on the
Great Lakes.

The area of Chile is also worth notice. The country
is on the average from one hundred to one hundred and
fifty miles wide and it has, all told, nearly three hundred
thousand square miles. That means that Chile is nearly
twice as big as California, about five times as large as Geor-
gia, and more than seven times the size of Ohio, Kentucky,
or Virginia. It would make four Minnesotas or six
Pennsylvanias and have room to spare, and if Texas and
Maryland were sliced into bits and put together they would
just about fill it. It is more than three times the size of
that tight little island of England, Scotland, and Wales.

This long-drawn-out country, running southward from
the Equator, has great diversity of climates and resources.
In the northern part rain does not fall from one end of the
year to the other. At Santiago, in the great central
valley, only a short distance east of Valparaiso, there is
rain on thirty-one days out of three hundred and sixty-
five, while at Valdivia, in the southern part of that valley,
it rains on half the days of the year. A little farther
south the rainfall is even more abundant. There are
localities where the people facetiously say that it rains
thirteen months a year. This being the case, the northern
part of the land is a desert; the central part is a rich farm-
inig country with orchards and vineyards and great hacien-
das, many of which are watered by irrigation; and the
southern part has lands that grow hay, wheat, and oats on
broad fields fed by the generous rainfall.

The latter region has also enormous areas of forest. It
will surprise you to know that one fourth of all Chile is

24

THE CHILE OF TO-DAY

wooded and that the Chileans have been cutting down the
trees and burning them in order to make farms, as we
foolishly did in the past. The forest area of Chile is as
large as Ohio and Indiana combined.

The lands of the Strait of Magellan and the archipelago
of Tierra del Fuego are more mteresting than we might
expect. They form the tail of this snake-like republic,
and as one looks at it on the map he imagines it to be some-
what like the country that Captain Scott found about the
South Pole. On the contrary, the climate is about as mild
as that of Sitka, Alaska, which has been compared to that
of Cincinnati or Washington City. The sheep there feed
out of doors all the year round, and hundreds of millions of
pounds of wool are exported from the strait each year.
During my first visit to Chile this sheep industry was at
its beginning. It has since grown beyond all that was
then prophesied and there are now single companies own-
ing more than one million sheep. Southernmost Chile,
made up of the submerged ranges of the Andes, some of
which are covered with glaciers, has a light fall of snow
in the winter, but it seldom lies long and the sheep grub
through it for the grass beneath.

All this is in striking contrast with northern Chile, from
which I have just come. That part of the republic would
have an almost tropical heat were it not that its climate is
tempered by the cold Humboldt Current to such an extent
that white men can live anywhere near the coast. There
are thriving towns at the ports that lie at the end of each
little valley watered by the snows of the Andes, and there
are cities at the points where nitrate and minerals are
shipped to the United States and Europe.

Northern Chile is mainly a desert, but compares favour-

25

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

ably with the most fertile parts of the earth in the value
of its resources. I have already spoken of the nitrates.
The country is also rich in copper and the north Chile
ports are outlets for the enormous treasures of the Bolivian
Andes. New copper and iron mines are being discovered,
and huge deposits of both these minerals are already
known. The Guggenheim copper properties near Anto-
fagasta are famous throughout the world, and the iron
deposits belonging to the Bethlehem Steel Company down
the coast near Coquimbo are the most valuable in the
country.

There is one bit of land belonging to Chile as well
known, perhaps, as the republic itself, and rich in its
association with English literature, if not in its mineral
wealth or crops. At dinner a few nights ago I ate
delicious lobster caught on Robinson Crusoe’s island,
which lies off the coast of Chile, about four hundred miles
west of Valparaiso and twenty-six hundred miles south of
the Panama Canal. It forms one of the group known on
the maps as the Juan Fernandez Islands, and is the place
where Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe, was
cast away. It belongs to Chile, and the government
steamers go there several times each year. During my
stay in Valparaiso | have talked with men who know the
island well and are acquainted with its present condition
as well as its world-famous story.

They describe it as a paradise. It has plenty of rain
and is covered with a luxuriant vegetation. It is affected
by the Antarctic Current, which keeps it perpetually cool,
and the northern half on which the rains fall is covered
with green.

The island is only twelve miles long by seven miles

26

THE CHILE OF TO-DAY

wide. It consists of a great mass of rocks rising out of
the ocean to a height of more than four thousand feet.
It is made up of hills and mountains, with many ravines
and short valleys. Most of the shores are inaccessible,
but at Cumberland Bay there is an excellent landing
place. Behind this is a settlement of cottages and huts
made of cane wattled with straw. The houses have gar-
dens about them, and at one time there was an attempt
to start a stock-raising industry. One settler is said to
have had as many as thirty thousand cattle and an equal
number of sheep. In time, however, his business fell
off and the cattle ran wild. The island now has wild
sheep and wild goats, which thrive without human
care. Excellent grass covers every open spot on the
northern side of the island. There are wild oats and
wild vegetables on some of the hills. There are wild
fruits which have reproduced themselves from the trees
planted by Alexander Selkirk, and from the same source
there are wild grapes as delicious as those Crusoe dried for
raisins.

‘The round trip to Crusoe’s island from Valparaiso can be
made in three or four days, and should include a look at the
cave in which Alexander Selkirk lived, and the place
where for four long years he scanned the sea for ships.

Alexander Selkirk, the hero of Defoe’s story and the
true Robinson Crusoe, was cast away more than two hun-
dred years ago. There is a monument to him, consisting
of a marble tablet set in the rocks on one of the higher
parts of the island, which is known as Robinson Crusoe’s
Lookout. Here Selkirk is supposed to have kept watch-
fires burning to attract the attention of any ship that
might pass. The inscription reads as follows:

a7,

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

IN MEMORY OF
ALEXANDER SELKIRK, MARINER

A native of Largo, in the County of Fyfe, Scotland, who lived on this
island, in complete solitude, four years and four months.

He was landed from the ‘‘Cinque Ports” galley, 96 tons, 18 guns,
A. D. 1704, and was taken off in the “Duke” privateer, 12th of
February 1709.

He died Lieutenant of H. M. S. “Weymouth” A. D. 1723, aged

47 years.
This tablet is erected near Selkirk’s Lookout by Commodore Powell

and the officers of H. M. S. “Topaz”
A. D. 1868

After his rescue, Selkirk went to London and there met
Defoe, who had many talks with him, from which the
latter got the idea and background of his story. “ Robin-
son Crusoe,” published ten years later, ran through four
editions in as many months. It is still a best seller, rank-
ing with the Bible and John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Prog-
ress” as one of the greatest sellers of book history.
“Robinson Crusoe” has been translated into nearly every
known language. It has been printed in Spanish, German,
Russian, Italian, Greek, and Arabic. It is one of the boys’
books of Japan, and the Chinese edition has had an enor-
mous sale.

Selkirk was found by a ship that had seen the fire on the
Lookout. According to the narrative of the captain who
took him to England, he was clad in goatskins and was run-
ning about as though crazy. When he reached London his
talk was the wonder of the coffee houses. His adventures
were the topic of all London. Sir Richard Steele told of
them in one of his papers, and Selkirk published a little
pamphlet of twelve pages describing his wanderings.

The Robinson Crusoe cave, where Selkirk lived, lies in a
ridge of volcanic rock. It is about thirty feet deep, and

28

Dee CHIEE OF TO-DAY

its roof is from ten to fifteen feet from the floor. The
entrance is almost hidden in ferns. The cave, which
shows signs of having been lived in, is like the description
of that in “Robinson Crusoe.” There are holes and
pockets scooped out of the walls and here and there is a
rusty nail driven in between the stones. The cavern
is said to have been the resort of the buccaneers, who once
ravaged the west coast of South America. There are
other grottoes upon the island, as well as cave dungeons
which were occupied when it was used as a prison camp
for criminals. Some of the cells were far underground,
and the prisoners could not stand upright in them. His-
tory records that the convicts once mutinied and murdered
their guards. They captured the boats in the harbour,
and three hundred of them made their way to the coast
of Chile.

The Chilean government has made Juan Fernandez
again a convict settlement and it now has what is con-
sidered a model prison. The island is also becoming
noted as a fishing ground, fine cod being abundant in the
surrounding waters, as well as lobsters and other shellfish.

29

CHAPTER V

YANKEE ENTERPRISE ON THE WEST COAST

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; there
stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him saying:
“Come over into Macedonia, and help us.”

UCH was the situation in Chile when the World
War cut off its imports from Germany and greatly
reduced those from other countries in Europe.
As a modern Macedonia, it turned to Uncle Sam
as St. Paul to supply its urgent needs. The result was a
tremendous increase in the commerce between the two
countries, with the United States not only leading in ex-
ports to Chile, but also the largest buyer of the products
of the west coast republic. In the reaction after the war
there was a great slump in trade, besides a renewal of keen
selling by the Europeans, but Chile still offers a rich market
for our goods, and one that increases in value with every
year. The foreign commerce of South America bulks large
in the markets of the world. That of Chile alone is worth
half a billion dollars a year and more, and well deserves
the attention of our manufacturers, banks, and shipping
lines.

I once had an interview with Mrs. Hetty Green, the
richest woman of the world, in which she told me that her
mind refused to comprehend more than a million dollars
at one time. It is the same with me. Let us subdivide
the total and look at the separate items. Here are a few

30

Great steam shovels are eating away this Chilean mountain of iron,
owned by the Bethlehem Steel Company and estimated to contain one hun-
dred million tons of high grade ore, fifty years’ supply for its mills in the
States.

business blocks of

ese pleasant passageways are
h which they are lined bring high

th

5)

roofed arcades intersect the largest

glass
Protected from the weather

Beautiful

Santiago. P :
popular waiting places, while the stores wit

rents.

YANKEE ENTERPRISE

selections from the wants of this country which show what
the trade is and what are some openings for Uncle Sam.

Take our cotton and woollen mills. ‘We have shipped in
times past only a fractional part of the total amount of
the textiles bought by Chile. But we must remember
that this trade is highly specialized. The Chileans have
their own styles and tastes, and are prepared to insist on
taking only what suits them best, besides demanding the
lowest prices and the long-time credits to which they
have been accustomed in their dealings with Europe.
They use all sorts of staple goods in cottons, woollens, and
silks, but at the same time there are many specialties
peculiar to the country. All the cotton lace is supplied
by Europe; and Japan is the leader in selling handker-
chiefs.

The trade for automobiles is rapidly opening up. Many
of the older machines are of English, German, or French
make, but they are being replaced by the cheaper Ameri-
can cars, which are to be seen in every large town on the
continent. There are now more of our automobiles sold
throughout South America than from all the European
countries together. In all the big cities there is a fair
and growing demand for motor trucks.

Our trade with Chile in manufactures of steel is an im-
portant item. The country uses thousands of tons of
corrugated and galvanized iron a year, of which the United
States before the war supplied but a small part. Many
of our great combinations of capital have been planning to
develop South American trade, and some of them are
already taking advantage of the opportunities. The
United States Steel Corporation has had its agents in
every country of the west coast, and for years its ships

ZI

THB PAIEFOR TO ESHENISER ERE

went to these ports by the Strait of Magellan. They now
go by the Panama Canal and their return freights are
such goods as have hitherto been carried by European
steamers. For a time this company supplied more than
half of all the steel Chile used. New buildings are largely
of steel construction, and these and the railroads projected
should be built with the products of our mills.

A volume could be written on the openings for railroad
material, not only in Chile, but in almost every South
American country. Chile is taking about a thousand
tons of passenger and freight cars per annum; and she
annually buys perhaps two thousand tons of locomotives
and thousands of tons of rails, railroad spikes, fish plates,
and car wheels. The sales of steel have been steadily
growing and must increase many fold, for Chile has
planned enormous railway extensions and her supplies
should come from our country.

The Bethlehem Steel Company has done a great deal
to build up American trade with the west coast of South
America. In the first years of the World War the com-
pany put into service the fleet of steamers it had built to
carry iron ore from its mines near Coquimbo, Chile, to
its steel mills in the United States. These vessels can
take cargoes of our goods on the return voyage whenever
there is enough demand for ship tonnage to pay the com-
pany to do a general carrying business with its south-
bound steamers.

Electrical development is looming large and demands
all sorts of machinery. For some time the country has
bought on an average four hundred thousand pounds of
electric bulbs a year, of which but a small proportion
have come from the United States. Many of the big min-

32

YANKEE ENTERPRISE

ing companies use electricity to operate their plants. The
Guggenheim copper works at Chuquicamata include in
their electrical equipment a steam plant on the coast anda
transmission line eighty miles long from there to the mines.
Electricity is much used in the nitrate factories and there
are great opportunities in supplies for the street car lines.
These have been largely owned by Germans and most of
the cars are of German construction, the only native thing
about them being the women conductors. The develop-
ment of Chile’s waterpower resources will increase the use
of electricity and stimulate the demand for all kinds of
electrical goods.

This is a land of big things, and Americans are gradually
getting hold of some of the most valuable properties, such
as the iron mountain between Antofagasta and Valparaise
acquired by the Bethlehem Steel Company. The ore,
which lies only five miles from the coast, is so situated
that it can be loaded by gravity. This property is said
to contain more than one hundred million tons of high-
grade ore, which assays from sixty to seventy per cent.
of pure iron. The mines are rich enough to supply the
Bethlehem steel works for more than half a century.

I have previously spoken of Chile’s wealth in copper.
The Braden copper mines, which are about two hundred
miles southeast of Valparaiso, were opened up by Ameri-
cans, including William Braden, E. W. Nash, and others,
and were sold later to the Guggenheims. Within a few
years some fourteen million dollars were spent upon them
and they are now potentially the largest in the world.
They can produce about two million pounds of copper a
month.

The Chile Exploration Company is the Guggenheim

3B

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

subsidiary which is developing the Chuquicamata copper
mines. These lie far north of the Braden property, about
one hundred and fifty miles from Antofagasta by rail, at
an altitude of ninety-five hundred feet. The ore body
being developed is over eight thousand feet long, one
thousand feet wide, and no one knows how deep. Dia-
mond drills have been put down to a depth of eleven
hundred feet and enough ore has been found to keep the
plant running for two generations.

The plant at these mines is one of the finest in the worid.
It has great crushing machines, acid-proof tanks, and elec-
trolytic equipment capable of treating more than three
hundred thousand pounds of copper a day. The machin-
ery has steam turbines and generators of ten thousand
kilowatts. Twelve miles of standard-gauge railroad has
been built, and some of the mining is done with steam
shovels from Panama, by which the ore can be taken out
at extremely low cost. This copper goes north through
the Panama Canal and the ships are available for every
kind of return freight.

The Bethlehem Steel Company mines and the Guggen-
heim copper mines require large forces of workmen and
their management is of course American. At Chuquica-
mata and Braden American methods and conveniences
have been introduced, and the American families con-
nected with each property make steady demands for
goods from the United States. The little city at«Chue
quicamata has a theatre, a hospital, two public schools, a
public library, and music halls for the workmen. There is
a Protestant and a Catholic church, and everything is being
done with a view to a long future, for in taking out that
enormous body of ore more earth will be moved than a

34 fe

YANKEE ENTERPRISE

Panama. This work, which should last for generations,
means a permanent American establishment in Chile.

Indeed, we seem to be coming into our own again in
South America. Our people started the sister continent
on its way to industrial development. The first steamship
line along the west coast was founded by a Massachusetts
Yankee, William Wheelwright, and it was he who began
railroad building on the southern continent. He establish-
ed the first gas plant and organized the first fire company.
The feasible plan for a transcontinental railway from ocean
to ocean was his, also, and he organized the Pacific Steam
Navigation Company which later went into the hands of
English capitalists, who have now the largest fleet on the
west coast.

An imperative demand for all our South American trade
is American ships, backed by the government, so that they
cannot fail to pay a profit. Chile and Peru are likely to
subsidize their lines of steamers and send them to our
Atlantic ports by way of the Canal. Our government
should do the same for American vessels engaged in South
American trade. This trade was virtually monopolized
by the English and the Germans before the war and our
steamship companies could not compete with them. They
gave such rebates to South American exporters that our
vessels could not get the freights, and, besides, our laws
for the protection of seamen make our ship-operating costs
higher than on European vessels.

W. R. Grace and Company started a fleet of ships run-
ning between Chile and New York, as well as a line plying
brisk trade along the west coast. This firm has branches
in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and New
Orleans, as well as in London, Manchester, and Birming-

25,

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

ham. It has mapped the countries of the west coast of
South America into selling districts as our wholesale
houses divide their domestic territories, and has covered
almost every part of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile
with its branches, agencies, and salesmen. Grace and
Company have long led in selling American machinery
and in handling kerosene and illuminating oils, and also
for many years have done a general business in imports
and exports, selling everything from needles to steam
dredges and from push carts to locomotives. The com-
pany soon grew famous for taking big contracts and its
capital and business run high into the millions.

Our trade with Chile, as with other South American
countries, has suffered greatly from the mistakes of our
own people. The poor packing of American goods, for
example, has been a cause of complaint for years. The
Chilean importer naturally resents receiving and paying
full price for articles which arrive in damaged condition
due to boxes giving way under rough handling from ship
to shore, or wooden barrels being used where metal drums
were needed. Many of our salesmen and exporters have
been too indifferent to the language and customs of the
country, and too impatient to learn the peculiarities of the
conditions to be met if the trade of the South American
is to be won and retained. Many American manufac-
turers, eager to sell south of the Equator in times of surplus
production at home, offended their South American cus-
tomers by failing to provide for them when demand was
strong in the States. However, each year a larger pro-
portion of American business is making an intelligent effort
to build up trade with the southern republics, and there
can be no doubt of substantial progress being made.

36

CHAPTER VI
THE NERVE CENTRE OF THE NATION

ANTIAGO is the social, political, and business
heart of Chile. It is the pulse of the nation and
the people move as it beats fast or slow. It
contains all of the statesmen and most of the

wealth of the republic. It is the centre of all great move-
ments. In fact, it might be called Chile itself. Its
population is about half a million, or about one eighth of
all the people of the country. It has grown in beauty and
modern improvements. It has widened its streets and
paved them with asphalt. The Alameda is a grand
boulevard, with a garden through the centre and drive-
ways on each side. The Cousino Park, the gift of the
millionaire family that owns the great coal mines, is on
one side of the city and a forest park on the other, skirting
both banks of the Mapocho River. Santa Lucia, the
table mountain rising straight up out of the city, is a
creation more wonderful than the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon.

I wish I could show you Santa Lucia. No city in the
world has a public park to compare with it. If you could
drop down into the very centre of Baltimore, Boston, or
Philadelphia a mighty rock with precipitous walls three
hundred feet high, with a base of one hundred acres or
more, you might have an idea of the park as it was at its
beginning. To make Santa Lucia what it is now, you

37

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

would have to cover the walls with vines, plants, and trees
until the whole became one mass of green. You would
have eucalyptus and palms, oak trees and pines, and semi-
tropical plants and flowers of every description. The
rock is so rough that natural grottoes are formed in its
sides, with many fountains and waterfalls. Its paths
are shaded by gigantic fern trees and shrubs of many
varieties, even the names of which are unknown in North
America. The visitor gets at every step upward a differ-
ent view of the city. At the top, a little park at the height
of a thirty-story office building, overhangs the city. In
the centre of this park is a level space floored with tiles,
where the city band plays in the evenings, and there on a
curtain stretched across the rock is an open-air moving-
picture show where the people sit out under the clear sky
of the Andes with the doings of other parts of the world
passing before them.

The view from Santa Lucia shows the magnificent
location of Santiago. The town lies ina flat basin or valley
surrounded by ragged blue mountains. It is seventeen
hundred feet above the Pacific Ocean and in plain sight
of the Andes. Around one side flows the Mapocho River,
farther down is the Maipo, and beyond are the rich farms,
orchards, and vineyards of the great central valley. Im-
mediately below, and on all sides, is the city itself, a vast
expanse of gray roofs cut here and there by wide streets
crossing one another at right angles. In the centre is the
Plaza de Armas, on which stand the cathedral, the city
hall, and other great buildings. A little beyond, taking
up a whole square, is the Chilean Capitol, one of the finest
buildings in South America.

Look down with meas I take in this view. Right under

38

Church spires stand out sharply in the panorama of Santiago spread be-
low Santa Lucia. The Catholic Church is a large landowner in Chile, hav-
ing a hundred million dollars’ worth of property in the capital alone.

No other city in the world has a park to compare with Santa Lucia, a
table mountain rising straight up out of the city of Santiago, and beautiful
as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. This is one of the entrances.

In the Quinta Normal is
ago. This park, planted wi
the most beautiful in the city.

the museum and exposition building of Santi-
th a great variety of trees and shrubs, is one of

THE NERVE CENTRE OF THE NATION

us begins the Alameda, the Pennsylvania Avenue or
Commonwealth Avenue of Santiago. It is lined with
magnificent structures. Scattered over the whole city
we can see the spires of churches rising above the roofs.
We also see trees apparently growing out of the houses.
These trees are in the patios. Many of the houses are
of Spanish style, being built around gardens filled with
roses and palms and other tropical trees.

Let us go down from Santa Lucia and ride through the
city. There are plenty of street cars in which we can
have a seat on the roof; or we can get an automobile quite
as cheaply as in any town in North America. We choose
the motor car, and fly this way and that through the town.
How big the houses are and how low! The older ones
cover acres, and few of them have more than two stories.
They are made of brick plastered with stucco and painted
in the brightest colours. In the best parts of the city
the architecture is Greek. The doors are upheld by
pillars, and I venture there are more Corinthian and Doric
columns in Santiago than in Athens. Other residences are
like Italian palaces, and not a few have cost one hundred
thousand dollars each, or even more. Nearly every great
house has some legend connected with it. There is one
splendid palace on the Alameda the plans for which were
drawn in Paris and sent out here to the builders. In
some way they got the plans mixed and put the back of
the house to the street, and so it remains to this day.

Now we are in the business part of Santiago. There are
many fine buildings; magnificent stores with the latest
goods from abroad. The town is noted for elaborate
window displays and its many arcades. The business
blocks are large and the fact that they are not skyscrapers

39

THE TAI OF THESHEMISPHERS

makes it possible to cut these covered passageways
through them, roofing them with glass. Often a block
of several acres will be intersected by a number of arcades.
Each is a favourite promenade, for the semi-transparent
roof shuts out the heat of the sun and at the same time
gives plenty of light. The stores in the arcades bring good
rents. Early in this century there was no attempt at
display. The prices were not marked on the goods, and
nearly all dealing was a matter of bargain and sale. A
revolution in merchandising was caused by the inaugura-
tion of a department store, a branch of a big Buenos
Aires establishment. This store sold goods at fixed
prices and had expert window dressers who varied the
displays every night. The people were delighted, and
forsook the old stores to such an extent that many of them
failed, and the others were obliged to adopt the new
methods. The business establishments of to-day are of
several stories, which make a more regular skyline than
that of an American city. They are more like the shops
of Germany and France than those of the United States.
Indeed, in many respects, the town is a miniature Paris.
The street scenes of Santiago are a combination of the
old and the new. One still sees donkeys and mules carry-
ing their panniers of vegetables and fruits from door to
door. There are still horses close to the sidewalks hobbled
by ropes around their front legs, and the ox-cart still
creaks its way through the town. At the same time there
are automobiles and cabs everywhere, and huge motor
trucks carrying heavy merchandise and building materials.
The characteristic costumes of the past are disappearing
before the changing styles of the present. You see Chilean
fashionables in Paris bonnets and modern gowns, as well

40

THE NERVE CENTRE OF THE NATION

as women and girls clad in black, with mantos or black
shawls covering their heads, necks, and shoulders, so that
only their faces show. This costume used to be common
with both rich and poor, but now the well-to-do confine
its use almost altogether to church-going. The laws of the
Church allow no woman to come toa religious service wear-
ing a bonnet. The only acceptable costume is dead black
with a manto of black crepe drawn close around the face
and fastened under the chin with a brooch, or it may be
pinned at the back of the neck with a black pin. Some
of the young women are now wearing black veils instead of
these shawls, and not a few of them have their black dresses
cut rather low in the neck. I have seen girls in mantos
wearing light-coloured gowns and shoes of white kid, but
this is not considered good taste.

The manto is sometimes used for shopping in the morn-
ings, the better clothes being reserved for the promenade
between five and seven in the afternoon, the hours when
everyone's chief business is going along the streets to
see and be seen. It has the great advantage of being
quickly thrown on, and also of hiding any slovenly dressing
beneath. I must say, however, that the Chileans are
usually well dressed. The men of the wealthy class
look as though they had just stepped out of bandboxes.
There are up-to-date men’s furnishing stores and dress-
making establishments with the latest European models.
The people generally are as well groomed as those of
similar classes in the United States, and the business and
professional men are more particular in their dress than we
are. The soldiers wear fine uniforms and the policemen
have suits of white duck with white helmets.

Santiago is not a cheap city. It is a town of the very

41

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE |

rich and the very poor. Many of the citizens own large
estates Out in the country and live at the capital, where
they have magnificent houses and entertain in grand
style. The city has a municipal theatre subsidized by
the government, which gives a season of Italian opera
lasting for eighty nights. The companies are brought
from Italy. Nearly every person of prominence has
his own box which costs all of four or five hundred dol-
lars in gold. At the opera full dress is always worn and
the ladies are resplendent with diamonds. The men
keep their heads uncovered during the singing, but as soon
as the curtain goes down, every man puts on his hat.
He may stand up in his seat and sweep the house with his
opera glass, staring at such ladies as interest him. There
is a great deal of visiting among friends in the boxes during
the intermissions, and the opera is really more of a social
than a musical occasion.

Important features of the social life of Santiago are the
races, which are usually held on Sunday. Santiago has
one of the finest race tracks to be found anywhere. It is
outside the city on a plain surrounded by mountains which
rise like walls of snow against the horizon. Above these
white walls is a sky of the bluest blue, and in our winter,
when the best races take place, the weather is as mild as
June in Virginia. The ladies come out in their summer
dresses and walk about through the parks and gardens near
the grandstand. The race track is owned by the Club
Hipico de Santiago. This club has done much to improve
the breeding of horses in Chile, and has made them one
of the best breeds in the world. The Chilean horse is a
cross between the Flamand and the Arabian stock
brought here by the Spanish conquerors. Under different

42

THE NERVE CENTRE OF THE NATION

climatic conditions, it has grown into an entirely new
type with great staying qualities and extraordinary
courage and spirit. Like the Arabian horse, it eats but
little, and it has all the endurance of the Arab and the
strength of the Flamand.

A part of the race-track receipts and also those of the
lottery are given to charity. The charities are under an
organization known as the Junta de Beneficencia, which
is one of the richest institutions of Chile. It gets its
income not only from private charity, but also from its
own properties and the funds donated by the state. It has
ninety-seven boards of management, which direct one
hundred and twenty-two charitable institutions. Here
in Santiago it has a home for children that accommodates
a thousand inmates, and an eating house that supplies
meals at regular hours to poor mothers and children to the
number of one thousand daily. It has orphan asylums,
associations for providing cheap homes for working
people, tuberculosis hospitals, and foundling asylums.

Under the care of the Junta de Beneficencia is the ceme-
tery of Santiago, one of the most beautiful in existence.
It was founded by General O’Higgins when he was presi-
dent of the republic, about the time that John Quincy
Adams was in the White House. Before that the Catho-
lics had their own cemetery, and there was no place for the
poor or for heretics. General O’Higgins believed that
death “makes all men of one size,”’ and he established this
great burial ground.

The cemetery is an enormous inclosure filled with old
cypress trees that extend for seventy-five to one hundred
feet above the paved sidewalks and courts. The coffins
are stored away above the ground in tombs of marble,

43

THE TAIL OF THE~HEMISPHERE

granite, or sandstone. One of the most beautiful me-
morials is the bronze figure of a woman standing on a
pedestal with her arms outstretched toward heaven.
This is to commemorate the two thousand women who
perished in the fire that destroyed the Jesuit church. One
of the men who did the most to save the women was the
American minister, a man named Wilson. He received
a testimonial from the city for his courage and is still
gratefully remembered here. Another striking monu-
ment in this cemetery is a bronze figure of the Christ.
It stands exactly in the centre of the city of the dead, with
avenues radiating from the four sides of its rock pedestal.
The rock represents Calvary. The figure is more than
life size and is wonderfully impressive. It is the finest
thing I have ever seen in any cemetery.

Santiago is a city of many churches and schools. Full
religious liberty is granted and the Protestants have
churches, missions, and schools in different parts of the
republic, though Roman Catholicism is the state religion
and the Church receives a large government subsidy.
It owns in Santiago alone property to the amount of
one hundred million dollars in gold. It has some of the
best business blocks, and the whole of one side of the plaza
belongs to it. It has acres of stores, thousands of rented
houses, and vast haciendas or farms. The Carmelite
nuns are said to be the richest body of women in South
America, if not in the world. They have property in
Santiago, and own many large estates scattered over the
central valley. The Dominican friars also possess millions.
Their church is the handsomest in Santiago, with an altar
that is the most beautiful on this hemisphere.

During my stay here I have visited the National Li-

44

THE NERVE CENTRE OF THE NATION

brary, the National Museum, and the Art Gallery, all of
which are well worth seeing. The library has about five
hundred thousand volumes and a special feature is a
collection of native newspapers that goes back to the
earliest days of the country. Among these are copies of
the first paper published in South America, and also of
the Aurora, the first paper issued in Chile. The latter is
dated February 13, 1812, and, strange to say, its edi-
tors and printers were men from the United States.

The Chile of to-day has excellent newspapers. It has
altogether about seven hundred papers and periodicals.
There are a hundred different periodicals issued in Santi-
ago, the chief of which is the Mercurio. This has editions
for both the capital and Valparaiso and is published both
morning and evening. The evening edition is printed
on pink paper. There is a big Sunday issue including
features similar to those of our metropolitan dailies.
The paper has fine offices in Santiago, with a counting
room that looks like the rotunda of a cathedral.

45

CHAPTER VII
HOW THE REPUBLIC IS GOVERNED

HE Chilean constitution is modelled upon that
of the United States, but there are striking
differences, in some of which Chile has the
advantage. The president, for instance, is

elected for a five-year term instead of four years, and he
cannot succeed himself. He may have another term,
however, if some other president intervenes. This takes
him out of politics so far as abuse of the civil service is
concerned.

A further point of difference is the conduct of the ad-
ministration. The president of the United States is as-
sisted by a cabinet of secretaries appointed by himself
and confirmed by the Senate. The president of Chile ap-
points his own cabinet, but he has also a council of state
of eleven members, five of whom are nominated by him
and the other six chosen by Congress. This council has
advisory functions and its approval is required for many
of the executive acts and appointments. In case our
president dies, the vice-president succeeds, and if he
passes away, the secretary of state becomes president for
the remainder of the term. Chile has no vice-president,
but if the president dies the secretary of the interior acts as
chief executive until a new president can be legally elected.

The president of the United States is far better paid
than the president of Chile. Our chief executive has a

46

Chilean soldiers trained under German instructors guard the portals of
the Moneda, the largest presidential residence on our hemisphere. It was
built from plans really intended by Spain for Mexico City.

All Santiago is to be found at the track every Sunday during the racing
season. The Chileans have developed one of the world’s best horse breeds
and most of the rich are enthusiastic turfmen.

Not only do members of the Ch
but senators are required to have an income of two thousand dollars a year,

ilean Congress serve without salaries,

and representatives five hundred

: dollars a year, in order to be eligible to sit
in the national chamber.

HOW THE REPUBLIC IS GOVERNED

salary of seventy-five thousand dollars a year, and an al-
lowance of twenty-five thousand dollars for travelling ex-
penses. He has, besides, his house rent free and many
perquisites. The head of the Chilean government gets a
salary of about seven thousand dollars and in the neigh-
bourhood of five thousand dollars for expenses. His total
official income is not over twelve thousand dollars, but
notwithstanding this he lives in good style and has a train
of servants and a handsome limousine.

The Moneda, or Chilean White House, is much larger
than our executive mansion. It covers almost four
acres and is a three-story structure built around patios,
or courts, filled with flowers and trees grouped about a
fountain. The building is pretentious for a country
the size of Chile, and, as the story goes, it was made so
through a mistake. It was erected in the old Spanish
times and the plans were drawn in Madrid and sent to
Santiago. The Spanish architect had been told by. the
king to make two sets of drawings, one for a large building
in Mexico City, then a part of the Spanish dominions,
and the other for a smaller building in Chile. He followed
these directions, but in the forwarding of the plans Santi-
ago got the Mexican drawings and Mexico received those
intended for Santiago. The result was this enormous
Moneda, which is to-day the biggest presidential residence
on this hemisphere.

Chile is one of the best-managed countries of all South
America. The people are noted for their patriotism.
They are for Chile, first, last, and all the time, and al-
though they will fight each other during the presidential
’ campaigns, they are peaceful enough once the president
is elected. This country is not one of revolutions. As

47

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

Lord Bryce puts it: “Chile is the only country in South
America which can boast to have had no revolution within
the memory of any living man.” Since the beginning of
the republic in 1810 there have been twenty-seven presi-
dents, and the only revolutionary period was between
1823 and 1830 when there were ten different executives.
During the first years of the republic, several of the presi-
dents had terms of ten years, and it was not until 1871
that the five-year period without reélection was inaugu-
rated. The president has the right of veto, but the congress
can, by a two-thirds vote, override his objection and make
a vetoed bill a law. When a presidential measure fails,
it is the custom of the cabinet to resign, and there have
been times when Chile has had a new cabinet on an average
of once a month.

The congress of Chile differs from ours in its elections,
its times of meeting, and in several other respects. The
members of both senate and house are elected by the men
of the country, but no one can vote unless he can read and
write. There is a difference in the voting age according
to whether a man is married or single. The bachelor
has to wait until he is twenty-five, but the married man
can vote at the age of twenty-one. Members of the
house of deputies must be at least twenty-one at the time
of their election, and senators must be thirty-six or more.
All candidates for congress must have a specified income,
and a member of the lower house cannot serve unless he
has at least five hundred dollars a year. Every senator
must have a minimum income of two thousand dollars a
year, and members of both houses must serve without
salaries. There is supposed to be no financial profit in the
position, the place being one of honour alone. As to

48

HOW THE REPUBLIC IS GOVERNED

graft, I have no doubt that it exists to a greater or lesser
degree. Indeed, I have yet to finda legislative body any-
where on earth where each and all of the members are
saints.

The educational qualification for suffrage and the re-
quirement of a specified income make the government
of Chile an oligarchy. The administration is confined
to the richer classes, and the great families control the
country. This is true of the Latin American republics
generally. It has always been so in Mexico, and the sup-
position that the Mexicans can have free and fair elections
under the present conditions is absurd to any one who
knows Latin America. The government of these countries
has always been in the hands of the few, and only by educa-
tion and gradual uplift can the masses be fitted to take
part in their administration.

The Chilean congress meets in winter, the sessions
running from June first to September first. Chile, as
you know, is south of the Equator, and therefore has its
winter when we have our summer. In addition to the
general meeting the president can call an extra session
whenever he chooses, and during the recess a permanent
committee of members of both houses presides over cer-
tain public business.

The Capitol is in the heart of the city. It is a two-story
building of white stone, and the porticos, upheld by six
Corinthian columns, form the entrance to the Chamber of
Deputies and the Senate. The Capitol is surrounded by a
garden filled with semi-tropical trees. There are palms
as big around as a hogshead though not more than
thirty feet high. There are beds of beautiful flowers.
In one corner is a fountain and in another a statue on the

49

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

site of the Jesuit church which was burned while the
congregation was at worship, resulting in the death of
more than two thousand women. The doors of the church
opened inward, and the panic-stricken people pressed
against them, holding them shut and causing this enor-
mous loss of life. The monument is a beautiful marble
Madonna in the attitude of mourning, with four angels
kneeling at her feet.

I passed this memorial on my way to the Chamber of
Deputies. This chamber is entered by a lofty hall in the
shape of a half moon and the galleries for visitors are reach-
ed by a marble staircase, which leads to a second and a
third floor. Both of the chambers have the desks of the
members running in rows back from the seat of the speaker.
The desks are of mahogany and are more like school
desks than those which we formerly had in our House of
Representatives at Washington. This building has also
rooms for the president and secretaries, and there is a
great hall where the president reads his message to both
houses in joint session.

The government of Chile has three branches: executive,
consisting of the president and his cabinet; legislative,
comprising the two houses of congress; and judicial, em-
bracing the courts. The country is divided into prov-
inces which correspond to our states, and departments
that may be compared with our counties. The president
‘ appoints the governors of the provinces and the chief
officers of the counties. They in turn appoint the officials
under them, so that the president practically controls the
civil service of the country. He also controls the courts,
appointing the judges and their subordinates, with the
approval of the council of state.

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HOW THE REPUBLIC IS GOVERNED

The courts are like ours in some respects and different
in others. A supreme court at the capital supervises all
the other courts of the republic. There are six courts of
appeal, one in each of the principal cities, and minor
courts scattered over the country. There is no jury
system except in cases where the freedom of the press has
been abused. All trials are before one or more judges,
the government being represented by public prosecutors.
The police are under the control of the minister of the
interior and seem to be well managed. Police expenses are
paid out of the national treasury.

The Chileans are proud of their army. They are
natural soldiers and it is said that they would rather
fight than eat. According to the laws, every able-bodied
citizen is required to serve in the army, and recruits are
called up in their twentieth year and trained for one year.
They afterwards serve off and on for nine years in the re-
serve. The country is divided into zones or military dis-
tricts, each of which forms a complete division of mobili-
zation. The country has good military schools and the
army is said to be the most efficient in South America.

The government of Chile controls most of the railways,
from which source it suffers a net loss of millions of pesos
every year. The roads are badly managed and poorly
equipped, and their officials and employees are a part of
the political machine rather than efficient servants of the
travelling public.

As | have said, a large part of the government receipts
comes from the export duties on nitrate and the sale of
nitrate properties. Another source of government income
is the import duties. The tariff covers nearly everything,-
‘with the notable exception of printing paper, which is

51

THE TAIL) OFS LHEVHEMISBH ERE

admitted free on the ground that books and newspapers
are a public benefit and should therefore receive state aid.
All publications are distributed without postage and
white paper sells for less than it does in the United States,
notwithstanding that it has to be carried ten thousand
miles or more to the markets.

One great difference between the government of Chile
and ours lies in the matter of religion. We do not believe
in any union of Church and State. The Roman Catholic
religion is here maintained by the government, although
according to the constitution all religions are respected
and protected. The Catholic Church of Chile gets a
certain amount of money every year from the government
treasury and is one of the richest churches of the world.
The great majority of the population is Catholic and the
Chilean Catholics have always been noted for their power
and wealth.

52

CHAPTERS VIII
AMONG THE CHILENOS

OST of the people in the Chilean cities live

in what we should call two-family houses.

The buildings are low on account of the earth-

quakes and many of them have only two

floors. The first-story apartments command higher rents

because it is easier to get out of them. There are no

big apartment buildings. The highest houses have

but four or five stories, and skyscrapers are yet to be
built.

The very poor live in little tenements of one story,
built in blocks. Each tenement has two rooms, one at the
front and the other at the back. The only window is in
the front. There are no heating or bathing arrange-
ments and all water has to be brought in from outside.
An apartment of this kind rents for from five to seven
dollars a month, but if it is in a good location and of a
little better construction it may bring fifteen or twenty
dollars. Many such buildings are owned by rich Chilenos,
who get nearly all their income from real estate. The
capitalists like these small houses because the rent is
always paid in advance and the interest on the invest-
ment is high. The church is one of the chief owners
of real estate in Santiago. Its holdings include all kinds
. of property from tenements to palaces and from indi-
vidual stores to great business blocks.

53

THE TAIB-OR THE HEMISRE Ih 4

Though wages are rising in Chile, they are still far
below those of the United States. Salaries of store
clerks range from thirty to ninety dollars of our money.
Bookkeepers get approximately sixty dollars a month,
stenographers from forty to fifty dollars, though if they are
foreigners they may receive as much as one hundred
dollars. In this case they must be able to speak and write
Spanish.

There is no chance here for poor young Americans
who have neither special experience nor skill. If they
are mechanical or mining engineers, or experts in farming
or fruit raising, there may be openings; but of brains and
muscle with no other capital the country has an ample
supply of its own, available at wages which would not
tempt the North American.

At present the native labour supply of Chile is largely
increased by the employment of women. They are mak-
ing their way into the government offices. In Santiago
they are the clerks in the post offices, they act as cashiers
in mercantile establishments, and they sell goods in the
large department stores. The shop clerks are paid
twenty dollars a month with a commission on their sales,
which in some cases runs the salary up as high as one
hundred dollars a month. The chief objection to such
positions is that the young women who take them are
likely to lose caste among their friends. Women have
formerly been so secluded that the people have not yet
become accustomed to their fighting the battle of life
for themselves. When a girl goes to school she is usually
accompanied by a servant or by her father or mother,
and someone is sent to bring her home. The positions of
secretary and cashier rank higher than those of clerks,

a4

Bread is delivered from cloth or skin panniers to the homes of the poor.
These are often one-story tenements without heat or water, yet exorbitant
rents are frequently charged.

Women are forbidden to wear hats to divine worship in Chile. where the
Catholic Church receives a subsidy from the government besides a large
income from its extensive real estate holdings.

AMONG THE CHILENOS

but the majority of the people look askance at the girl
who works for a living.

I doubt whether the young business woman is as safe

in Chile as she is in our country. The fact that she works
at all subjects her to the danger of liberties on the part of
the other sex. The white-slave traffic exists to a greater
extent than in the United States. The social evil is
licensed in the cities, where it is supposed to be under
rigid inspection. The Spanish custom of preventing
boys and girls from having anything to do with each other
on a normal social level of purity and virtue drives the
young men to the demi-monde, and defeats the ends it
hopes to gain.
' In order to understand the social conditions here it
must be remembered that the country is one of classes
and class distinctions. Chile has always had its aristoc-
racy, its middle class, and its common people. The aris-
tocrats are the descendants of the Spaniards and more
especially of the patriots among them who freed Chile
from the yoke of Spain. These men are the controlling
influence in the country. They have the fat offices and
own nearly all of the best property. Some have stock
in the nitrate and other mines and not a few are interested
in the various industries. Many of them are rich farmers
and from among them come the heads of the universities
and the chief doctors and lawyers. Most of the aristo-
crats are men of fine education. They are the progres-
sive element of the republic. They are intensely patriotic
and proud of Chile. They are not afraid to fight for their
rights and will not submit to injustice either as individuals
or as a nation.

The middle classes are merchants and small land hoiders.

9

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

Among them are many pure whites and many who have
more or less Indian blood mixed with that which has come
down from Spanish ancestry.

The lower class does the work of the country and its
members are known as the Inquilinos, or erroneously as
rotos. The word roto is one of contempt, conveying the
idea of a drunken, good-for-nothing loafer, or a bad,
quarrelsome character. This is not the nature of the
Chilean peasant. He is a good, hard-working, honest
man, as a rule, and anything but a loafer. He is a de-
scendant of the peasant class of north Spain and the
Araucanian Indians. He is intelligent, quick to learn
anything that requires handiness and craft. He can do
all kinds of work,and makes an excellent mechanic, farmer,
or orchardist. He is hardy and vigorous, and noted for
his endurance and patience. At the same time he is brave,
very quick tempered, and ready to fight upon the slightest
provocation. He seems to care nothing for life and very
little for pain.

Indeed, the Inquilino will do all sorts of foolish things
rather than be despised by his friends. The other day
several peons were drinking together with a crowd of
their fellows when one man charged another with being a
coward.

“You think sor” was the reply. ‘Well, I will prove
that !amnot. Would acoward dothis?”’ Thereupon he
pulled out his knife and plunged it again and again into
his abdomen before the admiring eyes of the crowd.

“| will show you that I also am not a coward,”’ rejoined
his accuser, and he began to stab himself. The two men
would have killed themselves had not a young priest rushed
in and torn the knives from their hands. These men were

56

AMONG THE CHILENOS

drunk, but even so, no drunken man but a Chileno would
think of proving his courage in such a way.

Drunkenness is the crying evil among the Chilean peas-
antry. The Inquilinos drink to excess in both city and
country. Their chief aim seems to be to get drunk and
the majority have a spree once every week. Monday is
called the roto’s holiday, for he is often so drunk on Sunday
that he has to take Monday to recover. As one employer
says, their liquor would kill an ordinary man at a thou-
sand yards. The stuff is gulped down in large quantities,
not because it is liked but to get a quick effect. There
are many saloons; in Valparaiso there has been one saloon
for every twenty-four men. In every Chilean village there
are drinking places, and all the small-town and hacienda
stores keep liquors for sale. Some timid movements
toward temperance have been attempted, but little has
been accomplished.

As a result of these excesses, of their poor food, and the
unsanitary conditions of their houses, the mortality among
the Inquilinos is great. They breed like Australian
rabbits and their babies die like flies. Only the strong
children survive; hence, perhaps, the peons as a class are
as tough and strong as any people in the world. I have
seen them carrying nitrate bags that weighed three
hundred pounds each, and tossing them about like so
many feathers. Four of them will lift a piano and carry
it along the roadway, and in the mines a peon will carry
all day long bags of ore weighing one hundred and fifty
pounds up and down the notched sticks that serve as
ladders.

The homes of the labourers are little better than pig
sties. Some of the haciendados owning large estates have

Th

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

erected model dwellings, but most of the tenant houses are
still shanties of adobe brick, or huts made of reeds and
sticks woven together and plastered with mud. They are
thatched with straw. The doors are rude and the win-
dows small. They have no floor but the ground; furni-
ture consists of little more than a table covered with
oilcloth, a few rough chairs, and a bed. If there is a
bedstead it is merely a ledge of sticks built up from the
earth and occasionally separated from the rest of the room
by acurtain. They have large families, and a hut fifteen or
twenty feet square is often the home of six or eight people.

The Inquilinos pay no rent for such houses and have
in addition small tracts of ground for cultivation, as well
as pasture for a certain number of cattle. In return they
must provide labour for the proprietor whenever required
and at wages often half the current rates of the neighbour-
hood. The haciendado has the right to discharge the
Inquilino and the Inquilino in turn may leave when
he pleases; but as a rule the masters try to hold their men
and the men are not likely to move if at all well treated.
On some of the farms there is a general store run by the
landlord for his servants where the Inquilino makes nearly
all of his purchases. I am told that the Inquilinos love
their masters and | know that the masters are fond of
the men who work for them.

The compulsory army service is having a civilizing in-
fluence on the lower classes. The Inquilino learns what
it is to walk on a board floor and sleep in a good bed. The
military system was modelled on that of Germany and
education is combined with the training. German pro-
fessors were brought over to teach in all the military acad-
emies and the cadets who aid in handling the troops are

58

AMONG .THE CHILENOS

usually well educated. The peasant is broadened by this
service; he gets a taste for better food and does not like
to go back to beans and toasted wheat. Asa result, after
leaving the army, many seek work in the cities. Being
natural mechanics, they soon learn the various trades.

Another influence that is civilizing and elevating the
Inquilino is the labour organization, which is slowly mak-
ing its way into South American countries. The railway
employees are organized, as are also the stevedores and
the members of some of the trades. The labour element
is beginning to take part in politics and it has representa-
tives in the Chilean congress.

The state railways and the police department are under
the civil service and these positions are in great demand
among the common people, because the wages are high.
The policemen receive about thirty dollars a month and
one meal a day. They are under military training.

Much of the mercantile business of Chile is done by
foreigners. The full-blooded Spaniard looks down upon
trade and is content to have the half-breed and the man
from outside do his merchandising for him. Big business
is mainly in foreign hands, and some of the great fortunes
of the country are held by families with European names.
Among these the Fosters, the Walkers, and the Rogers
are prominent. One of the leading patriots and heroes of
Chile was named O’ Higgins, another was Cochrane, and a
third was Arturo Prat. The city of Valparaiso is largely
European and its chief business establishments are
English or German. There is a considerable admixture of
English, Irish, and American blood in some of the best fam-
ilies of Santiago, while the southern part of the country
has been developed mostly by Germans.

59

GHAPTER [Xx
BIG FARMS OF THE CENTRAL VALLEY

AM in one of the garden spots of the globe—the
central valley of Chile. Anything will grow here
if it can only have water. As one of the bactendados
said to me, “All that you have to do is to spit on the
ground and drop in a seed, and presto, there is a tree!”

There is no place quite so fertile as that, but trees do
grow three times as fast as in North America. I have
seen groves of eucalyptus trees one hundred feet high
that are only ten or fifteen years old. At Santa Inés the
fields are walled with poplars as high as a church steeple.
There are thousands of trees on that estate as large as
any in the eastern part of our country and all of them have
been planted within the last twenty-five years. It is the
same with other vegetation. In the irrigated sections
peach trees bear at one and two years and grains and
grasses, including alfalfa, are wonderfully luxuriant. This
is so notwithstanding the fact that some of the ground
has been under cultivation for many generations. The
lands about Santiago have been tilled for three hundred
years and among them are numbered some of the finest
farms of the world.

The central valley is a wide strip of lowland ranging in
width from fifteen to a hundred miles and some seven
hundred miles in length. Beginning above Santiago, it
winds south through about one fourth the length of

60

FARMS OF THE CENTRAL VALLEY

Chile. To the east are the snowy walls of the Andes,
with the mighty cone of a dead volcano rising here and
and there above the other peaks. On the west are the
lower mountains and hills of the coast range, their tops
almost a desert, their foothills richly green. The valley
is settled throughout. There are large towns along the
state railroad, which runs through it from end to end,
but most of the land is divided into great estates.

In the north these estates are all under irrigation, for
only in the far south is the rainfall sufficient to dispense
with artificial watering. Much of the country is slightly
rolling, cut by creeks and little rivers fed by the Andean
snows. Some of these streams carry down a great deal
of silt, making fat the lands through which they flow.
Others, such as the Biobio, are as clear as crystal from one
year’s end to the other.

Riding southward through this country, one finds the
scenery far different from that of the richest parts of the
Union. There are crops in sight all the way, but the
fields are divided by rows of tall poplars or eucalyptus
or by walls of mud and stone rather than by fences. Only
along the railroad is there any barbed wire. The chief
buildings are great rambling stuctures, the homes of the
haciendados and the mean, mud-walled, thatch-roofed
huts of the labourers. There are no barns standing out in
the fields, and no elevators at the stations for storing the
grain. There are plenty of cattle and horses, but very
few stables or outbuildings. The weather is so mild that
stock grazes out of doors the year round, all the way from
Santiago to the Strait of Magellan. Therefore there are
no haystacks or strawstacks. The grass and alfalfa cut
are put up in bales and shipped to the cities, or to the

61

THE TAIL OF THE*HEMISPHERE

nitrate desert, where they bring higher prices. The climate
of the central valley is about the same as that of Lower
California, save that there is less rain, and in the upper
part nearly everything has to be irrigated. Something
more than two and a half million acres are already watered
by artificial canals, and I am told that it is possible to
put water on as many more.

Oxen everywhere take the place of horses and mules.
They are yoked to clumsy carts by wooden bars tied to
their horns and are driven with long goads with steel
spikes in the ends.

These lands are farmed ona grand scale, In many parts
of the valley two hundred acres is little more than a garden
patch and irrigated holdings of five thousand and even ten
thousand acres are common. There are some large vine-
yards. The estate of La Urmenta contains two thousand
acres and of these two hundred bear grapes. Its cellars
have a capacity of five hundred thousand gallons of wine,
of which the owners bottle and ship vast quantities every
year. The Errazuriz vineyard at the foot of the Andes
puts up six thousand bottles of wine a day in addition to
that which it stores in casks. It sells more than one hun-
dred thousand bottles of wine every month. There is
another vineyard that sends out four thousand gallons a
year.

One of the richest families of Chile is that of Augustin
Edwards, one time minister to the Court of St. James.
He has one hacienda twenty-five miles north of Valparaiso
that supplies a part of that city with milk. He has a fine
dairy herd of eight hundred cows, and is noted as a
breeder of horses, not only for racing but for heavy draft.
In his stables he has seventy-five Arabian mares, eighty

62

Chile is a land of beautiful women who know how to dress in the height
of fashion. The visitor regrets that they have largely abandoned the once
universally worn manto, shown here, for the more conventional styles of
Paris.

The haciendado, generally a descendant of the patriots who threw off
the Spanish yoke, is a czar on his own broad acres, where his word is law to
many Inquilino tenants and laborers.

FARMS OF THE CENTRAL VALLEY

Percherons, and one hundred and ten Shires. Another
big dairy, which also supplies Valparaiso, is that of
Don Thomas Eastman. On that place there are several
thousand cattle, including one thousand milch cows.
The Denoso dairy has still more. The latter estate has
the biggest silo in the world and one of the queerest.
It is nothing more than a great ditch three hundred and
fifty feet long, twenty feet wide, and twelve feet in depth,
filled with red clover which has been trodden to pieces
by the hoofs of horses and then placed between layers of
straw. The Denoso farm runs its machinery and lights
its dairy with an electric plant operated by waterfalls
two miles away.

During my last trip to Chile I visited the estate of
Macul, which belongs to the Cousinos, the family of a
woman long said to be the richest widow of the world.
This huge place cost more thana half million dollars when
it was bought by Don Cousino. It is now valued at overa
million and consists of five thousand acres of irrigated
land. The water rents amount to nearly as much as the
salary of a United States senator. It has a large number
of fine blooded horses, and two hundred cattle bred from
the best Durham stock. Its vineyards have hundreds of
thousands of vines, and produce millions of bottles of wine
every year. Everything grows lavishly. Between the
poplars lining the irrigation ditches | saw wild blackberry
bushes thirty feet high.

Another great hacienda is that of Aguila, which con-
tains eleven thousand acres and belongs to Don Santiago
de Toro. It is not far from Santiago. At the time of
my visit it had over two thousand cattle and two hundred
horses, most of them used for breeding alone, and for the

63

THERESA Ora HERE MISEHER

family and guests. All of the farm work was done by
oxen. Of the cattle, three hundred were dairy cows
which produced six thousand dollars’ worth of milk and
eight thousand dollars’ worth of butter a year.

The home of the owner is a series of long, low, one-story
buildings around patios and gardens. They have roofs of
red tile and the floors are of brick. They have wide
porches and windows looking out on the gardens. The
houses are in a grove of trees at least one hundred feet
high, some of which are wonderful palms. When I
visited the estate there were about two score guests be-
sides the thirty children and grandchildren of the family
of the owner. Each of these children had his own pony.

Other haciendas have beautiful buildings of modern
construction, with great parks, miles of shady drives, and
all the other surroundings of the millionaire’s home in the
States. Many of them are using modern machinery, and
some are experimenting with fertilizers and intensive
cultivation. Everywhere I go I see American ploughs,
and there are three or four importing houses in Chile
whose salesmen travel over the country introducing Ameri-
can harvesters, reapers, and windmills.

64

CHAPT ERAX
WINTER FRUITS FOR AMERICAN TABLES

Y WAY of the Panama Canal, Valparaiso is

within nineteen days of New York, and a

South American California full of summer

products is almost at our doors. The fruit

of Chile begins to ripen late in our fall, and plums,

peaches, and pears are ready for the market in the midst

of our winter. The prospect of a great exportation of

Chilean fruits to the United States is agitating the farmers.

The government is investigating the subject, and schools

for teaching fruit growing, packing, and exportation are

being established. Chile has long been the chief fruit-

growing country of the lower half of our hemisphere.

It already has hundreds of acres of orchards and its vine-

yards are yielding about fifty million gallons of wine
every year.

In order to learn what this industry may offer to the
United States, I have spent a day with Don Salvador
Izquierdo going over his fruit and nursery plantations,
situated near the town of Nos, about twelve miles from
Santiago. Don Salvador is the fruit king of Chile and
I might almost call him the Luther Burbank of our sister
continent. He has an irrigated hacienda of about four-
teen hundred acres, covered with gardens and orchards
for raising flowers, plants, and trees of almost every
variety. There are more than thirteen million different

65

THE TAILSOEST HES EMISPESR

individual plants on the estate, and he ships them by the
tens of thousands to all parts of Chile, and across the
Andes to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. He is not only
a grower of nursery stock but a scientific breeder of new
varieties. He has introduced into Chile more than forty-
eight hundred kinds of fruits and plants, and has developed
by cross-breeding hundreds of valuable trees and flowers.
He has already produced fourteen varieties of apples, not
affected by the insect known as the schizopera lanifera,
which is now destroying the apples of many parts of the
world. The new varieties are grafted on the stalks of
ordinary trees. The insect crawls up the stalk, but it
stops where the grafts begin, and the trees and their
fruit are found to be safe.

Among the other experiments of Sefior Izquierdo is an
elongation of the roots of the eucalyptus trees so that they
can be grown on the dry lands at the top of the mountains.
This is done by sprouting them in pots, where the young
trees are fed with nitrate of soda and treated in such a way
that their roots are about four times the usual size. Upon
being planted, they go far down into the soil and tap the
underground layers of water, and are therefore able to
resist the drought. It was in recognition of this discovery
that the Royal Agricultural Society of London unanimous-
ly elected Don Salvador a member of that body.

- I cannot give you a better idea of the possibilities of
fruit raising in Chile than by describing a trip with Don
Salvador over his great fruit estate. We started at the
station in Santiago and within an hour reached the little
town of Nos. Our way lay through the central valley
and we saw great farms and vineyards on both sides of the
railway. At Nos we left the train and took the private

66

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WINTER FRUITS

car line for the hacienda, five miles away. The road is
lined with poplars and passes great fields in which cattle
are grazing. The estate lies on a plain at the foot of the
mountains, sloping up toward them just enough to
give the fall required for irrigation ditches. These are
fed by a branch of the Mapocho River, a rushing stream
so large and so swift that it not only irrigates the one
thousand acres of nurseries but also furnishes electric
current to run all the machinery. One of the canals
turns a turbine that gives one hundred and twenty horse-
power. This plant lights the hacienda and other buiidings,
runs sawmills and threshers, and operates the machinery
of a large fruit-packing and canning establishment.

As we rode in we passed a threshing machine imported
from America, and its noise carried me back to the farms
at home. The grain was coming in from the fields in
enormous ox-carts and was fed directly from the carts to
the thresher. As the barley poured forth it was caught
- in buckets made of skin holding a bushel or more, and
men carried them to a heap on the ground. Near by
stood the sawmill where the men were making lumber out
of trees not over twenty years old.

Around the large fields were rows of tall Lombardy
poplars forming the fences of the estate. They made
green walls of wonderful beauty. Frequently they were
planted on each side of the irrigation ditches, making a
double row of trees about an orchard or pasture. These
tree-marked boundaries, which are customary throughout
the central valley, add much to the beauty of the country.
They change the face of the landscape and make it look
’ like the farming regions of France. There must be tens of
millions of these beautiful trees.

j 67

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

The estate is divided into sections, some devoted to
grain, some to vegetable and fruit growing, and others to
plant nurseries. Riding on the railway we passed rapid-
ly from one immense tree-walled enclosure to another. It
is impossible to describe all the different plantations, they
were so numerous. Don Salvador said he had ninety
thousand different species of trees. He sells half a million
eucalyptus trees every year and receives orders for as
many as forty thousand trees at one time. He has one
plantation of citrus trees in various stages of cultivation
with oranges, lemons, and grapefruit of every variety. He
has long lines of poplars from South Carolina stock, and
in a single nursery twenty thousand acacias. In one sec-
tion we found a quarter of a million peach trees ready for
sale and, in another, acres of apple trees ranging from mere
sprouts to trees as high as our heads. There are one
hundred and fifty thousand apple trees in this field twice
as tall and as thrifty as those of the same age in nurseries
of the United States.

Our next visit was to a plot containing one hundred and
fifty thousand cypress trees. These had just been set
out and were about as long as my finger. I picked up a
bunch and counted them. There were thirty-one trees
in my hands, each an evergreen that will soon be decorat-
ing some lawn of Argentina or Chile. These trees are
raised under great tents of brush, or arbours with brush
spread upon them. They made me think of the tobacco
tents at home. Farther on I saw a plot of three hundred
thousand plum trees, and farther still stretched broad
fields of oranges, lemons, figs, and other semi-tropical
fruits.

In the fields I saw ninety acres of vegetables ready for

68

WINTER FRUITS

gathering, a whole farm of ripe red tomatoes, long rows
of green beans, and an enormous quantity of sweet corn.
Among the fruits were peaches on forty-five thousand
trees. They were of exquisite flavour and as big as my
fist. Many varieties have been created by Don Salvador
-and in some of them he has succeeded in reducing the
stones to half the size of those in our peaches.

The peach orchards average one hundred pounds of
fruit to a tree, which would amount to four and a half
million pounds of fruit. At five peaches to the pound this
would make twenty-two and a half million peaches, and
Don Salvador believes they could all be landed in New
York in good condition if fast cold-storage steamers were
available to take them via the Canal. He estimates that
even after such a voyage his peaches would still be good
for four or five days on the market.

Chile might supply almost unlimited quantities of
fruit for our winter consumption. There are many big
plantations and these people understand scientific fruit
growing and can do business in the large. Don Salvador
is perhaps the best among them, but there are many other
orchardists who manage their farms almost as well and
who would devote themselves to raising fruit for us, once
the demand has been created.

We also visited the floral section of the estate and saw
flowers of almost every known variety of the tropical
and temperate zones. The great hothouses had in them
thousands of orchids, and in one section were twenty
thousand rose trees of more than fifteen hundred kinds.
There were vast beds of lotuses and. water lilies, and
groves of persimmons which Don Salvador is introducing
into Chile. He has forty varieties of this fruit brought

69

THESTALLLOR THE HENMISPE ERE

from Japan, Korea, and China, and he expects to make the
Asiatic persimmon as popular here as it is in the United
States.

He is also experimenting in the creation of dwarf
plants and trees. He showed me a peach tree no higher
than my knee, with ripe fruit, and a fig tree of the same
size also in bearing. He is growing the famous dwarf pines
of Japan and has some about a foot high that will grow
no taller.

He is importing fruits and trees from all over the world
at great cost. I saw forty new vines just unpacked
and in excellent condition, but some other plants received
at the same time and costing ten thousand dollars had all
died on the way.

I visited the packing house where fruits and vegetables
are put up by the ton. It has a capacity of ten thousand
cans a day, and ships by the carload. There are huge
cement warehouses equipped with the most modern
machinery for drying, preserving, and canning, and great
buildings filled with tin plates made by the steel companies
of the United States. The cans are made in the factory
by electric machines operated by Chileno men, women,
and children. Peaches are peeled by a machine that does
the work of one hundred and fifty women.

As we sat in Santa Inés, the big country house of the
plantation, I asked Don Salvador to give me some idea
of the possibilities of Chilean fruits for our own winter
markets. He replied:

“There is no doubt that one of our chief industries of
the future is to be raising fruit for the North. We shall
finally be able to land fruit in New York in fourteen days
from Valparaiso, and with the right kind of steamers we

70

The great central valley of Chile is one of the garden spots of the world.
Poplar and eucalyptus trees, planted in rows to take the place of fences,
grow quickly to great heights, while the crops of grain and grasses are luxu-
riant.

The Chilean peasant, or Inquilino, is of mixed Spanish and Indian blood.
He is hardy, vigorous and a good worker, ready to fight on the slightest
provocation, and likely to spend his week-ends in drinking.

Melons with a flavor equal to our Rocky Fords, and weighing seventeen
pounds each, are commonplace in Chile; but only recently have they been
available in our markets, where sometimes they bring six dollars apiece.

WINTER FRUITS

can send such varieties as will bring the highest prices at
a time when there is no other fruit to compete with them.
You get somewinter fruits from Australia and Cape Colony
but they are twenty-six days or more from New York,
and you have to pay a freight several times as much as
the freight from here. The difference in distance would
be thousands of miles in our favour.

“Our fruit season is from November to May. We
could furnish green almonds from December to June and
ripe chestnuts in March and April. Green almonds are a
delicacy you do not know in the United States but they
bring enormous prices in France. We could supply you
with peaches from December to April and ripe plums in
January, February, and March. From March to August
we can give you alligator pears, and papayas from March
until June. There are ripe figs from December to April
and apples in your early summer long before your own
apples are ripe. We have also many fruits you do not
know, for which I am sure a market might be created,
such as nisperos, frutillas, lacunas, and chirimollas, all of
which ripen in your winter. We shall also have oranges,
lemons, and grapefruit for your summer consumption
and watermelons and muskmelons for winter. The Chil-
ean muskmelon is as big as a pumpkin and as delicious as a
Rocky Ford canteloupe. We raise them in great quanti-
ties and could send shipments to New York in the heart
of your winter. They would sell there for a dollar apiece
or more, for they are so big that one would be enough for
a dinner party of a dozen persons.

“We have plantations in bearing to start the business
and we have so much soil adapted to growing these
fruits that we could supply every American city. A single

71

THE TAIL? OF sl HE* HEMISPHERE

acre will yield from ten to twenty thousand pounds of
fruit and there are millions of acres yet to be planted.”’

Under the leadership of such men as Don Salvador, the
Chilean growers have formed a codperative organization
for packing and exporting fruit similar to those of Cali-
fornia and elsewhere in the United States. The govern-
ment of Chile is lending its coéperation in developing
markets in the United States, and considerable progress
has been made. The practicability of shipping fruit
from Chile has been demonstrated by the fact that Cali-
fornia growers have found they could send their prod-
ucts to New York by steamer via the Panama Canal, a
longer voyage than from Valparaiso to New York.

“J
te

GHARLE Rex!
CONCEPCION AND THE LOTA MINES

WING to the increasing demand for Ameri-
can goods, the port of Concepcién will one
day be as well known to our business men

- as Valparaiso is now. Concepcién is the

metropolis of southern Chile and the outlet of the best
farming part of the country. It has railway connections
north and south through the central valley, and extensions
to the line crossing the Andes and Argentina to Buenos
Aires. It already takes a large part of our exports to
Chile; American farm machinery and tools of all kinds are
for sale in its stores and are distributed from here through
southern Chile and the farms of the great central valley.
Not far from it are the extensive coal mines of Lota, and
within a short street-car ride is Talcahuano, the chief
naval station of the republic.

Concepci6én, surpassed in size only by Valparaiso and
Santiago, is growing rapidly. The town lies on the Biobio
River not far from the sea. A low range of hills sepa-
rates it from the ocean. When it was first founded it
lay right on the beach. Then came an earthquake that
swallowed the city as the whale swallowed Jonah.
Concepcién disappeared into the maw of the Pacific. It
was wiped out like Port Royal, Jamaica, and there is now
only a bathing resort on that spot. In rebuilding, the
people chose the present site, where the hills keep out

1B)

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

the waves, and in spite of the earthquakes the city still
stands.

I say in spite of the earthquakes, for there are so many
that the land shakes as though it had the ague. The
quakes are almost as common as those of Japan. We had
one last night that swayed the walls of my hotel room and
set the electric lights swinging. The first shock awakened
me. The experience made me think I was in a storm at
sea. My bed rose and fell, and a bottle of ammonia
on the edge of my washstand dropped to the floor with a
crash, filling the room with its pungent odour. I looked
at my watch. It was ten minutes after eleven. I rose
and went out into the hall. The walls were still quivering,
and as I entered the balcony looking down on the patio
a smokestack fell. The guests of the hotel came running
out in their night clothes, for fear that the heavy tiled
roof of the building might cave in. Some of them stayed
out of doors all night. I waited until the tremors ceased
and then went back to bed. But I could not sleep for
an hour or more for fear of the second shock which often
follows a first. I finally dropped off and slept soundly
until four o’clock, when the second quake came. It
was quite severe but not so bad as the first. The dis-
patches of to-day show that these two earthquakes have
been felt all over Chile. They have thrown down one
small town, and created such consternation at the capi-
tal that many of its citizens spent the night in the
streets,

I do not like earthquakes. There are regions where
they have some kind of a shock every day; but even there
the natives are afraid of them, and it is only the ignorant
globe-trotting tenderfoot who says he does not fear them.

74

CONCEPCION AND THE LOTA MINES

The most severe earthquake I ever experienced was in
1894 in the capital of Japan. At that time a great many
houses were destroyed, the high chimney of the Parlia-
ment house crashed through the roof, and the American
legation was almost split in twain. When the earthquake
occurred, I was in the household department of the Mika-
do, having an interview with the high court chamberlain
concerning the Empress, about whom | was to write an
article. The structure was modern, similar to the public
buildings of our own country. Had it been of Japanese
architecture, it would probably have stood. We saw
the walls moving and felt the floor rising and falling.
The Japanese official said: “There is an earthquake,
and | think we had better get out.”’ The halls were
filled with flying clerks. We rushed out and were barely
clear of the building before half of it fell.

Nearly all the houses of Concepcién are of one story
on account of the earthquakes. The town covers a great
deal of ground. It lies on a flat plain at the edge of a hill
one thousand feet high, known as the Caracol. This is
a public park and rises over the city almost like a fort.
I climbed it to-day for the view. Walking through the
wide streets lined with one- and two-story buildings, I
crossed the Alameda and went up the winding slopes. The
road was bordered with mighty pines, reminding me of the
great cryptomeria avenue that leads up to Nikko, Japan.
Mixed with the pines were mimosa trees in full bloom.
The trees and many shrubs formed a wall of vegetation
on one side of the road. When we came to the top, we
were high above the city of Concepcién and the valley
of the Biobio. We could see the houses of Talcahuano,
the naval station, and the ocean beyond. We could pick

75

THE: TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

out the river winding down to the sea, and the bridge
across it, the longest and largest in Chile.

Concepcion lay just below me, a great expanse of terra-
cotta-roofed houses with a plaza of green in the centre.
The big cathedral, with an audience room covering half
an acre, loomed up on one side of the plaza. The
wide streets radiating from the plaza are paved with
asphalt and are clean and well kept. Looking down upon
the houses I could see here and there a cluster of trees
rising from the courts or patios around which they are
built.

Toward the north there was nothing but wooded hills.
I might have imagined myself in the midst of a wilderness
but that the city lay at my back. Even from this dis-
tance the town showed signs of its sport-loving character.
I could see the golf links, the polo.grounds, and the race-
course with its track more than a mile long. The bands
play in the plaza every evening and the people come out
in their best clothes and walk about and look at each other.

During my stay at Concepcion | have been investigat-
ing the opportunities for American coal by way of the
Canal. The best coal mines of Chile are the Lota mines
on Coronel Bay, not far from here. The coal veins are
all around the bay and extend far out under the ocean.
The seam is about five feet thick and the rock above it
so compact that the water does not seep through. In-
deed, the submarine tunnels are so clean that one could
walk through them in immaculate evening clothes.
The mines are equipped with modern machinery and
lighted with electricity, and the coal is carried out on
electric cars. It is a strange and picturesque adventure
to ride on an electric coal train at a speed of twenty miles

76

CONCEPCION AND THE LOTA MINES

an hour through a mile-long tunnel under the Pacific
Ocean, while above one’s head float the great steamships
into which are shovelled the black diamonds loaded on the
cars by sooty, half-naked miners.

The supply of coal furnished by the Lota mines does
not begin to fill Chile’s demands. The country uses more
than twice as much coal as it produces, and imports a
large part of its supply from Australia and England. The
state railways use four hundred thousand tons per annum,
and practically all of the smelting coal comes from Austra-
lia. J understand there are extensive deposits in the
province of Arauco, south of Concepcion, and that there
is coal near Punta Arenas, at the Strait of Magellan.
Petroleum and natural gas are known to exist five hundred
‘miles south of Valparaiso, in a region not far from the
steel works at Corral. The Panama Canal has meant that
our coal from the Gulf and South Atlantic states has an
increasing market here, and considerable coal forms the
return freight in place of the nitrates and other minerals
shipped to our country through the Canal.

It was the Lota mines that formed the foundation of the
great Cousino fortune, still one of the largest of Chile.
For several generations it had been known that coal existed
not far from Concepcién, and it was at the time when
Madison was president that William Wheelwright tried
to utilize these deposits for his ships. It was not until
1855, however, that they proved to be of any value, when
they were bought by Don Matias Cousino.

It is not a good steaming coal, but it does very
well for smelting. Cousino established smelting works
near the mines and began to develop the properties. In
one year his net receipts were almost a million and a

77

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE —

quarter dollars. He established the town of Lota, which
has twelve thousand people, including most of the six
thousand men employed in the mines. It has good
homes, a church, a hospital, free doctors, and a plaza for
recreation.

When Don Cousino died, his widow’s income was over
one million dollars a year. She had not only the coal
mines, but silver and copper mines, bonds and stocks.
She had a large hacienda near Santiago and a fine home
in that city. She gave to the public the Cousino Park,
which is the chief pleasure ground of the Chilean capital,
and her palace and park at Lota were also famous. Both
places are wonders of landscape gardening, that at Lota
being full of picturesque effects not only on land but
on the sea.

73

Don Salvador Izquierdo (centre) is the fruit king of Chile and the
Luther Burbank of South America, besides being a pioneer in opening mar-
kets in the Eastern United States for the products of the orchards of his

country.

Chile’s fruits are grown in the central valley, extending southward
about seven hundred miles from above Santiago, and from fifteen to one
hundzed miles wide. When the orchards are in bloom it seems an earthly
paradise lying just outside the gates of the city.

The Lota coal mines extend for more than a mile under the ocean. It
is said that miners hear the clank of chains when ships drop anchor in Coro-
nel Bay overhead.

Oxen with yokes fastened to their horns, are the chief draft animals of
southern Chile. The two-wheeled cart is best adapted to the muddy roads
of this region of abundant rainfall.

CHAPTER XII
THE STORY OF THE ARAUCANIANS

HE story of the Araucanian Indians is one of the

thrilling romances of all South America. At

Temuco, a lively young city of lower Chile

four thousand miles south of Panama, I saw
many of them on the streets, and from there went out to
visit their reservations. I watched them working in their
fields, went into their houses, talked to the men and
women, and so can give a picture of the last of this race
as they are to-day.

The stubborn resistance of the Araucanian Indians
proved an impassable barrier to the ancient dominion
of the Incas. Their lands marked the southernmost limit
of the Incas’ dominion. Later, for three generations,
they waged a successful war against the Spanish invader,
destroying his forts and besieging his cities. They
killed Pedro Valdivia, the man who founded Santiago,
and it was only inch by inch that his successors drove
them toward the south. When they were finally overpow-
ered by greater numbers, they refused to be the slaves and
hirelings of the conquerors. They continued their fight-
ing, off and on, and even to-day they maintain their own
identity. They have their own farms, and lead their
lives apart from the descendants of the white-skinned
invaders who robbed them of the empire they once
possessed. I say empire, for the Araucanians’ domain

79

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

comprised the best part of the Chile of to-day. They
had farms and raised crops of corn and potatoes, and in the
far north they had llamas and alpacas which they got
from the Incas.

The Araucanians of that day were much like our
Indians of eastern North America. They did some
farming but most of them lived by hunting and fishing.
They were warlike and always ready to fight for their
rights. The armies they raised to fight against the
Spaniards were large. Valdivia was frequently attacked
by thousands of Indians, and at one time a force of ten
thousand Araucanians besieged Santiago. That was
some fifty years after the discovery of America. The
Spaniards had surrounded the city with palisades, but the
Indians tore them down and set fire to the houses. The
colonists would have been swept from the face of the earth
in this region had it not been for Inés Suarez, a beautiful
girl, who might be called the Joan of Arc of Chile. This
girl was the mistress of the commander, Valdivia. In
his absence she assumed the leadership of the troops.
She put on a coat of mail, and, at the head of the little
Spanish army, drove the savages back. During the siege
she captured six of the Indian chiefs, and it is said that
she cut off their heads with her own hands.

During the wars with the Araucanians, the Spaniards
had’ much the same experience that our forefathers had
in colonial days. The Indians surrounded the settle-
ments and killed every white man they could get away
from his fellows. They bottled up the invaders in Santi-
ago, where they were reduced to eating rats and the roots
of wild plants. The white men had their periods of
famine like those of our colonists at Jamestown, and during

80

THE STORY OF THE ARAUCANIANS

one of these, Valdivia, who was the Captain John Smith of
Chile, wrote to Charles V of Spain that fifty grains of
corn were a good day’s ration and that all the corn was
eaten, both meal and bran. Valdivia carried his fighting
far south of Temuco. It was here that he was once at-
tacked by forty thousand warriors, and saved himself only
by charging the enemy with a company of cavalry. The
natives were frightened by the horses, and in the battle a
thousand were killed and four hundred taken prisoners.
In former campaigns the Indians had tortured the whites,
and Valdivia, in order to terrify them, ordered that the
noses and right hands of the prisoners should be cut
off. After that they were allowed to return to their
tribes.

Fighting of this kind went on for years till at last
Valdivia was captured and tortured to death. He was
carried bound and naked through the woods to an Indian
camp, and some writers say that the Araucanians poured
molten gold down his throat. .

The braves had their great chiefs in the persons of
Lautaro and Caupolican, now honoured by statues in the
Chilean capital. Gradually they were subdued by the
Spaniards and their lands were taken from them just as
we have taken the lands from our Indians. They are
now settled upon reservations or upon farms which they
are not permitted to sell. The parcels are not held in
common, but are divided up among the families, so many
acres to each person. A baby gets the same allotment as
an old man of sixty. If one of the family dies, there is a
new subdivision of the family tract and if the whole family
disappears the lands revert to the government. Most of
the holdings are patriarchal. The oldest male member

81

THE*TAILS OF (PHESHEMISPHERE

of the family controls the property, and when he dies
another is selected to take his place. The people have
a loose tribal relation and are ruled by their chiefs under
the Chilean government. The race has been decimated by
disease and drunkenness, and grows less year by year.

I have visited some of the Araucanian reservations.
The land is rolling and looks not unlike parts of Ohio and
Indiana. There is nothing to indicate that it is on another
continent and more than a thousand miles south of the
Equator. The soil is a rich loam, and I was surprised at
the extent of the farms and crops. The farms are worked
mainly by whites and half-breeds, who are hired by the
Indians for a share of the harvest. On one Araucanian
farm | saw a white man ploughing, and upon another an
intelligent Chileno was threshing wheat. That Indian
farmer had about two hundred acres in grain, which his
sons were harvesting with the aid of white men. They
used McCormick headers pushed along through the
fields by oxen yoked to the machine by their horns.
A white Chileno did the driving, and the Indians urged
the oxen forward with their iron-tipped goads. The
driver told me that he got a percentage of the crop for
his work.

On the edge of this wheat field were a number of Indian
huts. Every family had half-a-dozen dogs, which rushed
at me when I came near. At the same time the women
scolded and the men scowled as I took a photograph of
some of the girls. The Araucanian houses are seldom
more than fifteen feet square. Their walls are of boards
and their ridge roofs of thatch. There are no windows and
the light comes in through the rude door at the front.
There are neither yards nor gardens about the houses, and

82

_ The dearest possessions of the sturdy Araucanian women are the heavy
silver ornaments handed down from generation to generation. They are
also vain of their braids of dark hair, though they pluck out their eyebrows,

Though they successfully resisted the armies of the Incas, and remained
unconquered by force, the Araucanians are succumbing to the ravages of al-
cohol. Their cemeteries show signs of their ancient spirit worship, now
giving way to Christianity.

THE STORY OF THE ARAUCANIANS

no conveniences of any description. The only furniture is
a bed of poles, or two or three beds in case the man has
more than one wife, which is by no means uncommon.
In one of the huts I found two fires going, and over each
fire was a wife cooking for her own brood of children.
The floor of the hut was Mother Earth littered with
farming implements and clothing, saddles and harness.
From the rafters hung ears of corn, strings of onions, and
long strips of dried meat. The place looked like a junk
shop.

The sleeping arrangements of this home consisted of two
closet-like rooms partitioned off from the body of the hut
by poles and skins. In each was a low platform covered
with sheepskins. Each platform was the bed of one of the
wives and her share of the children.

I was interested in the cooking. The fires were in holes
in the ground inside the hut, and the smoke was so thick
that it could be felt. It had so blackened the roof and
the walls that when I took hold of a rafter my hand was
covered with soot. The cooking utensils were iron pots
resting on stones over the coals. Each pot held a stew
of mutton cut up in small pieces and seasoned. The
women were roasting potatoes and green corn in the ashes,
and the smell was delicious. A great deal of red pepper
is used. The Araucanians have a way of killing a sheep
and peppering and salting its lungs while it is dying.
They hang it up by its fore legs and stuff the windpipe
with salt and pepper. While the animal gasps under this
treatment, they cut the jugular vein, and a stream of blood
is turned into the windpipe in such a way that it washes
the salt and pepper into the lungs. Then the lungs are
taken out and eaten raw, having thus been seasoned to

83

KAEWTAIELOF THE HEMISPHERE

taste. At all meals the men are served first. The women
act as waiters and eat what is left.

The Araucanians look much like the North American
Indians. They are about the best type of the Red Men of
this continent. Their features are much stronger than
those of the Aymaras or Quichuas who live high up in the
Andes. The young men are straight and well formed.
The girls, when young, are plump and pretty. They
age rapidly, however, and at forty they have as many
wrinkles as a withered apple. The women have square
faces with high cheekbones and low foreheads. They have
copper complexions and jet-black hair, which is long,
thick, and straight, and of which they are proud. They
bind it up in two braids and wear it down their backs or
tied around the crowns of their heads, so that the braids
stand out like horns over their faces. They often decorate
their plaits with silver beads and join the ends together
by a string of silver balls.

The Araucanians are fond of ornaments and, as in many
semi-savage countries, the jewellery of the woman is the
savings bank of the family. The most common orna-
ments are of silver made into earrings and breastpins.
Some of the earrings are of solid silver plates as large as a
playing card; others are discs with earhooks attached.
Now and then the women have silver chains around their
necks, and others have their breasts decorated with silver
beads. They have rings on their fingers and beads of
silver sewed to the red cloth on their ankles. They wear
their jewellery on all occasions. In one threshing group |
have seen the bags were held by an Indian girl who wore
a silver breastpin as big as my two hands; and another
near by had on a coronet of silver coins. These girls wore

84

THE STORY OF THE ARAUCANIANS

waists and short skirts and had bright-coloured blankets
over their shoulders fastened with silver buckles in front.
The Indian men delight in brilliant-hued ponchos.

Most of the Araucanians drink to excess. On my way
to one of their reservations I drove past an old brave so
full of liquor that he swayed this way and that on his
pony. His wife rode on the same pony, perched up behind
him. She was dressed in a flaming blanket and a red
skirt, but her head was bare and her long black locks
floated out in the breeze. Her feet, also, were bare, and |
could see that it was only by pressing her heels tight
against the flanks of the horse that she was able to keep on,
holding the while to the waist of her drunken husband.
The liquor they drink is almost pure alcohol and the
women drink nearly as much as the men.

There is some Christian work going on among the Arau-
canians. The Catholics have one mission and the British
and Canadian Protestants another. There are mission
stations at Temuco, Quepe, and Cholchal, with churches,
hospitals, and industrial schools. The missionaries have
translated Genesis, The Acts, and a part of the Book of
Revelation into the Araucanian language, and have re-
duced that language to writing.

These Indians have no literature, but they have tradi-
tions which have come down from generation to genera-
tion. Many of them hold to the superstitions of their
forefathers, believing in the Great Father and in good and
evil spirits. They think every man has a good spirit
and an evil spirit always with him, and that the two keep
up a constant fight for his soul. The evil spirit is even
thought to follow him to his grave. For this reason a dead
man is seldom buried at once, and when he is interred the

85

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

people make noises to frighten the evil spiritaway. Their
witch doctors are supposed to be able to ward off evil
spirits and keep them from harming a man and his crops. |

The witch doctor is always called in when an Indian
grows sick, and the doctor’s skill is credited with the cure
if he recovers. If not, the doctor claims that the patient
has been bewitched and may even point out the man or
woman who has put the spell upon him. In the latter
event the relatives of the deceased are likely to attack the
person so accused. The Araucanian witch doctors are
women selected when young by the older sorceresses and
initiated with elaborate ceremonies.

86

All the possessions of this Araucanian family are included in the few ob-
jects before the door of their hut. They learned the art of weaving from
their ancient enemies the Incas, having formerly worn only guanaco skins.

The government gives each family of foreign colonists free land and a
yoke of oxen, but under present conditions Chile is hardly suited to the
standards and ideals of the American pioneer farmer.

_ The first German colonists found Valdivia a mud village in the forest.
They have made it a modern and thriving city, and have opened up for
farming the wooded lands of the surrounding region.

CHAPTER XIll
SOUTH DEUTSCHLAND

HE southern part of Brazil is sometimes called

West Deutschland. It consists of several states

populated by Germans, with towns and cities

governed by German-speaking officials. It has
German newspapers, German signs over the stores, Ger-
man factories and breweries, and nearly all business is in
German hands.

Another great German settlement, the one in lower
Chile, might be called South Deutschland. It is far south
of Valparaiso and within a short distance of the Strait of
Magellan. These notes are written at Valdivia, in this
section. The Germans began to come here in 1850 and so
many immigrated that some of the towns became more
German than Spanish. The first settlers were from Ham-
burg. They numbered seventy men, ten women, and
five children. That colony was followed by others, and
by the close of our Civil War there were more than four-
teen hundred Germans settled here. They were true
pioneers, who chopped down the forests, built log cabins,
and planted wheat fields and orchards in their clear-
ings. They opened up a large part of the region, and
made many fine farms. Being thriftier than the ordinary
Chilenos, many became rich.

They have built great sawmills, and ship lumber to all
parts of Chile. They raise wheat, potatoes, and apples,

87

THE: TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

and not a few are engaged in merchandising. Owing to
their enterprise, the region has become one of the richest
and most prosperous parts of the republic. Large towns
have grown up, like Puerto Montt and Valdivia. The
latter, which has a population of twenty-five thousand,
is the metropolis of this part of Chile. Lying five hun-
dred miles south of Santiago, in the heart of the forest,
it is surrounded by new farms and clearings. Its port is
the principal one of south Chile and machinery of all
kinds, especially agricultural implements, are landed
here in great quantities. Valdivia had a fire some years
ago which swept away its houses of wood and tin, and in
their places we find a new city set up along modern lines
and up to date in every particular. Many of the build-
ings are of reinforced concrete and two and three stories
high. The shops have plate-glass windows coming down
to the pavements, and the window displays are better
than those of our towns of the same size at home. The
streets are wide and the pavements twice as broad as
those of Santiago. The whole town is white, and the
concrete construction makes it look like a substantial
municipality built of sandstone.

The city is more German than Chilean. The shop signs
are German, and there are cafés in which you get excellent
beer made by the Germans. This beer, famous through-
out the republic, is shipped north and south along the
coast. The principal hotel has a French name, but it is
run by a German, and the Germans own the greater part
of the town. One of the leading exceptions is the im-
porting house established by W. R. Grace and Com-
pany, which has a pretentious two-story building cover-
ing the whole of one side of the plaza. This store is

88

SOUTH DEUTSCHLAND

filled with American machinery, from windmills, reapers,
and threshers to hand sewing-machines and notions.
There are also American canned goods and textiles.

When I arrived in Valdivia at night, I expected to find
everything closed as tight as a drum, as is the custom in
nearly every Spanish-American city along the west coast.
In Lima, the capital of Peru, with a population of one hun-
dred and fifty thousand, by seven o’clock the streets are
deserted, the stores are closed, and the traveller walks
between blank walls. In Santiago, which is double the
size of Lima, the merchants go to bed with the chickens.
But Valdivia is alive after dark, and on Saturdays the
stores are open until late in the evening. The city is
lighted by electricity, and crowds walk the streets and
promenade back and forth in the plaza.

Valdivia is on the Calle Calle River, which flows from
the Andes down to the Pacific. The town is about twelve
miles from the mouth of the river, where lies the port of
Corral. All goods are landed at Corral, and carried up
to Valdivia in barges. I took a steam launch and rode
down to look at the port. The stream is about as wide
as the Potomac at Washington. We first sailed by lumber
yards, boat-building works, sawmills, and other wood-
working establishments. A little later we wound our way
among low hills covered with woods, passing through a
maze of fine scenery. The water is of an emerald hue,
and flows between dark green banks and low hills as
precipitous as those of the Rhine between Mainz and
Cologne. Had the hills been covered with vineyards we
might have imagined ourselves on the Rhine, there were
so many Germans on board our boat.

The port of Corral has only a few hundred people. Its

89

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

buildings are small, the wharves are poor, and much of
the unloading is done out in the harbour. We saw two
steamers at anchor and on our way to the port we passed
barges carrying coal and machinery up the river. Only
small vessels call here, and since the railroad has been com-
pleted a large part of the freight is carried by rail. {

Southern Chile, with its abundant rainfall and rich
farming lands, is just the opposite of the north. It is a
land of forests rather than desert, and it is almost as well
timbered as was the eastern part of the United States
when our first settlers came. There is so much wood
here that Chile, notwithstanding the arid lands of the
north, is said to have in proportion to its area more
forests than any other country of the world. I rode
through green fields with stumps scattered through them,
all the way from Concepcién to Temuco. Farther south,
men were cutting farms out of the woods, and here and
there the wheat was growing among the burned timber,
some of which was still standing. Here was a forest
where the trees had been stripped of their bark close to
the ground, and yonder one full of skeleton trees killed
in that way. In the latter case the bark had dropped off
and the trunks and branches were white as bleached
bones.

At nearly every railroad station are lumber yards piled
with fence posts, ties, and building materials awaiting
shipment to the north. The lumber is not good in com-
parison with ours. It is full of knots and cracks. The
boards are narrow, and nothing like the fine-grained wood
which comes to Chile from California, Oregon, and Wash-
ington. Most of the trees here are Antarctic beech and
pine. There are also hard woods. The forests are thin

go

SOUTH DEUTSCHLAND

and there is much underbrush, but it is impossible to clear
the land as we do, because it is so troublesome to get rid
of the stumps. Some of the farmers are now importing
stump pullers from the United States, while not a few
are using dynamite. Ringing and burning the trees
leaves a great deal of dead timber, and no good cultivation
can be done until the dead trees are out by the roots.

After the land is cleared it is not at all like similar tracts
in the United States. The fences are of barbed wire, but
there are no large fields in cleancultivationandnofinebarns
and houses asin our country. The buildings are generally
log cabins of one story roofed with straw or slabs. They
are put up in a rude way, and but a few of them have
gardens or flowers. There are some good homes owned
by the Germans, but the native Chilenos live little better
than savages. They seem to be camping out rather than
settling down to build up a country.

Much of the new acreage is devoted to wheat. This is
the chief cereal of Chile, the country producing something
like nine million bushels per year. Some cattle are raised,
but here in the south the animals are ragged and lean, and
their meat is used chiefly for making charque, or, dried
beef. In the central valley the animals are much better,
and here and there you find Herefords and Durhams:.'

The heavy work of the farms, both in north and south
Chile, is done by oxen, the team being increased according
to the labour. A half-dozen yokes of oxen may be used
in hauling out timber, and it takes a long team to drag
the wheat carts over the mud roads to the stations. The
oxen are yoked by the horns, and push rather than pull.
The yoke is fastened to the tongue of the cart, and by
pushing against the yoke, the oxen force the cart onward.

Ot

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

The animals in front of the first yoke, which pushes the
tongue, have ropes reaching from their yokes to the cart.
This method of working seems cruel, although the natives
claim that it is not. When yoked up, the oxen cannot
move their heads from side to side. They are driven with
long goads, tipped with sharp spikes, which are often so
mercilessly used that the blood flows.

Farm cultivation is now done largely with American
machinery. The wire for fencing is furnished by our
steel mills, and there is scarcely a farm that is not using
tools imported from the United States.

At the same time the old methods persist side by
side with the new. Much of the grain is still threshed
out by mares on threshing floors. In this process the
ground is pounded hard and the sheaves of wheat are cut
open and spread over it. Then a drove of mares is driven
around and around to tread out the grain. The winnow-
ing is done by throwing the straw into the air, and the
bagging is by hand. Adjoining a farm where these
methods are seen you may find an American thresher,
and the wheat may be cut, threshed, and bagged in the
fields.

Chile has no elevator system. After threshing, all
grain is taken at once to the railroad and shipped. It is
put up in sacks of two hundred pounds and loaded on flat
cars.:’ There are few warehouses and at some of the sta-
tions the grain is piled in sacks in the open and covered
with canvas. 5

A word of advice to such Americans as are thinking of
coming to Pacific South America to settle: It seems to me
that the opportunities are poor and that we can all do
much better at home. The government would like

Q2

SOUTH DEUTSCHLAND

colonists, and, on the frontiers, free land may be had.
Here in Chile the limit is one hundred and twenty-three
acres for each head of a family and seventy-four acres
for each son who is of age. Contracts are often made
with foreign colonists by which their steamship passages
from Europe are advanced, and free railroad transporta-
tion is given to the place of settlement. In some cases
the government gives each family a yoke of oxen, one
hundred and fifty boards for the building of a hut, and
something like fifty pounds of nails for fastening the
boards into place. This is on condition that the colonist
establish himself at once on the land given him, and work
it steadily for at least six years. He must contract to
pay back, without interest, the amount of passage money
received, and not to sell anything he gets from the state,
nor to mortgage the property or dispose of it until after
the six years have passed. Such regulations seem at-
tractive, but coming to a strange land, where the language
is not understood and the customs are at variance with
those of our country, is liable to prove disappointing. An

so I say: DON’T. i

93

CHAPTER XIV
THE RAILROAD BACKBONE OF CHILE

OR two weeks I have been riding over the state
railways, as a guest of the government, and
have gone here and there at my will. The
place where I am now writing is the southern

terminus of the system. It is Puerto Montt, a thriving
port on the very frontier of the settled portion of Chile,
and as far south from Pisagua, where the railroad begins,
as the distance from Boston to Dallas, or from New York
to Denver.

Our exporters will find it profitable to consider the rail-
way system of Chile. This will develop into a long line
of railroad running from Peru to the Strait of Magellan,
with feeders going west to the coast and east to the moun-
tains. This line, which is known as the Longitudinal
System, will eventually connect Peru and Punta Arenas,
the metropolis of the Strait and the southernmost town
in the world. The railway now extends almost to the
Peruvian boundary, traversing the nitrate fields and
connecting them with Valparaiso and Santiago.

The first part of the road goes through the desert
southward almost to the latitude of Valparaiso, where
the Longitudinal System crosses the Transandine Rail-
way to Buenos Aires. Then begins the great fertile
central valley which I have just left behind. Below that
the road enters the forest region, which extends to and

94

Southern Chile, with its abundant rainfall, thick forests, and rich farms,
is in pleasant contrast with the deserts of the north. Rows of fast growing
poplars along the roads are a characteristic feature of the landscapes.

Most of the steepest grades on the Transandine Railway are on the
Chilean side. Corkscrew tunnels like those of the Gothard route were too
expensive, so the height is conquered by a rack and pinion system.

THE RAILROAD BACKBONE OF CHILE

beyond this part. The central valley section has been
built a long time and, when I first visited Chile, pioneers
were beginning to penetrate into the forest region. 1
then came on construction trains as far as Temuco, the
home of the Araucanian Indians, and I am now a day’s
ride farther south, having gone through pioneer settle-
ments all the way. Long before the middle-of the century
the rails will probably have been extended to the Strait of
Magellan, which is about as far south from here as from
St. Louis to New Orleans.

The Longitudinal Railway belongs to the government,
which is furnishing the capital for the extensions. At the
present time Chile has over five thousand miles of railroad
in operation, of which about one half is state-owned.
The republic began to take over the roads about a genera-
tion ago, and it has paid out several millions of dollars
for them. The lines are managed by officials appointed
by the president. There is a general manager assisted
by nine administrators, each of whom holds a position
similar to that of general manager of a private railroad.
The chief offices are at Santiago, and there is close con-
nection with the government as to all appointments.
Every man who gets more than a thousand dollars a year
receives his appointment directly from the president,
while the others are selected by the general manager with
the advice of his subordinates. This makes every rail-
road position a government job, and all appointments
from administrator to the brakeman and track layer are
more or less affected by “‘pull.” I have talked with many
people concerning the service. So far, I have yet to meet
an unprejudiced observer who believes that government
ownership is good for the roads or the people. Indeed,

95

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

the railway question is one of the live issues of public
discussion, and the figures show that most of the lines are
run at a loss of several millions of dollars annually.

The difference between the receipts and the expendi-
tures does not reveal the whole deficit arising) from gov-
ernment management. There has been an enormous
additional loss in the wear and tear on the roads and
rolling stock, owing to carelessness and waste, but in 1914
an act was passed appropriating more than twenty million
dollars to re-equip and reorganize the system. A con-
siderable amount of this went into new cars, and large
orders were placed in the United States.

The rates of travel on the state railways are low for a
country like this. First-class fares are about two cents
a mile; second-class, one and one third cents; and third-
class, less than two thirds of a cent a mile. There are
additional charges of fifty per cent. on the express trains
and of about one hundred per cent. on the rapidos and
trains de luxe. There is a reduction of ten per cent. on
return tickets of all classes. The freight rates are high
and more than half of the earnings come from freight.
The extra rates for baggage are much above those in the
United States, and on the central system four per cent.
of the total earnings comes from luggage charges.

Chile has railways owned by private companies in ad-
dition to the government roads. Their trackage is almost
as great as that of the national system, and their total
capitalization is quite as large. Their freight and pas-
senger rates are higher, but the service is better. Many
of them are run in connection with mines and other in-
terests, and the returns do not show the actual receipts
or profits.

06

THE RAILROAD BACKBONE OF CHILE

For instance, the nitrate railways, of which there are
seven, run from the ports out into the desert and carry
little but nitrate of soda. They range in length from fifty
to three or four hundred miles and their business is in pro-
portion to the output of the nitrate factories, or oficinas,
which they serve. The Pisagua railroad between Pisagua
and Iquique has a length of three hundred and fifty miles
and a capitalization of ten million’ dollars. It paid over
seven per cent. on its common stock for a number of years,
and its net receipts are still large. That road is owned in
England.

The Anglo-Chilean nitrate road, running from the port
of Tocopilla to several different oficinas, is another profit-
able line.. Its length is seventy-odd miles, it is capitalized

-at five millions of dollars, and in one year its dividend was

fifteen per cent. The road from Mejillones that con-
nects with the Antofagasta Railway to Bolivia is about
eighty miles long, with a thirty-inch gauge. It carries
the copper of the Guggenheim syndicate mines down to
the coast and must have an enormous profit therefrom.
The Taltal Railway Company, which runs a line from the
southern nitrate fields to the port of Taltal on the Pacific,
paid dividends of nine per cent. some years ago. All of
these railroads are feeders of the Longitudinal System,
which has been built to connect them as well as to give a
line north and south throughout the republic.

A most interesting feature of the Chilean railway situa-
tion is the number of lines planned to cross the continent
over the Andes and connect up with the Argentine railway
systems. One of those already built extends from Val-
paraiso to Buenos Aires. This is about the distance
between New York and Chicago. It crosses the Andes at

97

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

an altitude of ten thousand five hundred feet through a
tunnel nearly two miles long. It was expensive to build
and is so costly to operate that its freight rates will always
be high. It has a rack-and-pinion or cog system of about
twenty-five miles, and the gauges differ so that freight has
to be transferred twice during the journey across the con-
tinent.

Another transcontinental line, nearly completed, will
connect the port of Antofagasta with Buenos Aires. ‘This
is an extension of a branch of the Antofagasta—Bolivia
railway. I have described my journey over it from
Bolivia to the sea. The transcontinental extension leaves
the main line at Uyuni, where it has an altitude of twelve
thousand six hundred feet, and thence passes through a
rich mineral district, crossing Bolivia to the frontier at
La Quiaca, where it connects with Argentine lines. This
will never be a general passenger line across South Amer-
ica. The distance is too great. It will, however, be a
short cut from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic.

Chile has plans and surveys for several important trans-
continental railways south of the present line from Val-
paraiso to Buenos Aires. Some of them will end at
Bahia Blanca, the Argentine port on the Atlantic Ocean,
a day’s ride south of Buenos Aires, and one will connect
Talcahuano, the great commercial and naval station near
Concepcidén, with Antuco, and thence go on into the Argen-
tine, there to meet the roads having their termini in
Bahia Blanca. This Transandine road would be about
two hundred miles shorter than the road now in operation’
between Valparaiso and Buenos Aires via Juncal. It will
be easier to build, and will cross the Andes through a
tunnel less than a mile long. The government has

98

_ Seven of the railroads of Chile were built to carry nitrate from the mines
in the desert down to the sea, and earn good dividends on this traffic alone.
They also serve as feeders to the government Longitudinal System.

The difficulties of railroad construction in Chile are obvious. That it
was the first South American country to build steam roads was partly due
to the energy and skill of an American citizen, William Wheelwright, who
linked the capital to Valparaiso.

Projects for electrification of Chile’s railroads give special importance
to sources of water power such as the famous Falls of Laja in Concepcién
province, estimated to be capable of furnishing one million horsepower.

THE RAILROAD BACKBONE OF CHILE

granted a subsidy of one million dollars, to be paid at the
rate of five thousand dollars per kilometer, as it is opened
to traffic, until six hundred thousand dollars has been
paid. The remaining four hundred thousand dollars will
be held until the line has been joined to the Argentine
system. Another road to Bahia Blanca via Donquimai
has been decided upon and will have a length of eight
hundred and fifty miles.

Between these southern transcontinental roads and the
Transandine road now in use several routes to Buenos
Aires are being considered and surveyed. One of these
from Valparaiso via Maipo is about one thousand miles
long. Another from the port of San Antonio to Buenos
Aires is a trifle over a thousand miles in length. In ad-
dition to these there are three others planned to go
through the Colorado route, which would connect them
with the port of Constitucién. [Each of these routes is
about a thousand miles long.

One reason for Chile’s desire for more transcontinental
lines is the fear that use of the Panama Canal will reduce
the shipping through the Strait of Magellan. Many
of the ships that have come by way of the Strait now go
through the Canal and down the west coast of Chile, and
the country will have much less commerce by the Strait
than it had formerly. The new railroads, however, would
effect close connection with the Argentine, and tend to
route future travel to Europe by way of Argentine ports
instead of northward via Panama.

Chile was the first country of South America to build
railways and, as I have said, they were constructed by
United States citizens. The first road on the continent
was made to connect the silver mines of Copiapé with the

99

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

port of Caldera and was built by William Wheelwright.
This line was opened July 4, 1851. The first locomotive
used is now shown in one of the Chilean museums. It
was made by Norris Brothers in Philadelphia in 1850.
Wheelwright began the railroad from Valparaiso to Santi-
ago, and made surveys over the Andes with the idea of a
transcontinental route. His first road was built four
years before Henry Meiggs, another great American con-
structor, began work on the Central Railroad southward
from Santiago.

William Wheelwright’s name is highly honoured in
Chile. He did the country great service in aiding her
early development. He was born at Newburyport,
Massachusetts, and at the age of twenty-six was made
United States consul at Valparaiso, where he established
a line of passenger vessels along the coast.

Henry Meiggs built the wonderful road that goes up
the Andes back of Lima. He also constructed the line
from Mollendo to Arequipa, which now goes on to Lake
Titicaca, and he did much railroad building in Chile. He
completed the railway from Valparaiso to Santiago and
built some portion of what is now included in the Longi-
tudinal System.

From Puerto Montt I shall travel northward back to
Santiago, where I shall take the Transandine line for
Argentina. But before I leave this part of the world I
want to tell you of the trip through the Strait of Magellan
to Tierra del Fuego and to the Falkland Islands, which I
made when I was last in the southern hemisphere. Fewer
and fewer travellers are now taking this route. What they
save in time they lose in other ways, as I found these
lands full of interest, while the voyage through the famous

100

THE RAILROAD BACKBONE OF CHILE

Smyth’s Channel, not often attempted nowadays, gave
me sights and thrills not equalled in my travels anywhere
else in the world. I give you my notes as I penned them
during that journey, modifying them only where changed
conditions demand.

10!

GHARDUE RAY
THROUGH THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN

AM at the tail end of our hemisphere. At Cape

Froward, the lowest continental point of the world.

Three thousand miles nearer the South Pole than the

foot of the Siamese Peninsula at the end of Asia.
More than a thousand miles below the Cape of Good Hope
at the bottom of Africa, with a distance almost equal to
the thickness of the earth between myself and the northern
parts of the United States.

I am on a little steamer in the Strait of Magellan. Just
opposite, the black, rocky walls of Cape Froward rise
almost straight upward to a height of twelve hundred
feet, and behind them, glistening in the moonlight, are
the glacial snows of Mount Victoria, two thousand feet
higher.

I am at the end of the great Andean chain. These
hills mark the jumping-off place of the mighty ridge that
ties the continents together. Rich with copper, silver,
and gold, they crawl from here on their sinuous way toward
the North Pole. They span the Equator, they drop
their heads at the Isthmus of Panama and end only at
the Arctic Ocean, beyond the gold mines of Alaska and
the Klondike. The hills to the southward are a part of
Tierra del Fuego, above Cape Horn, and that great white
frozen pyramidal cone rising among them is Mount
Sarmiento, which pierces the southern sky more than one

102

Cape Pillar marks the western entrance of the Strait of Magellan.
Great rocks of which it is formed, rising fifteen hundred feet above the sea,
are visible to mariners many miles away.

Few people are lower in the scale of civilization than the Alacalufes.
They live mostly on the water in their rude canoes, and depend upon coat-
ings of seal oil more than clothing to keep them warm.

THROUGH THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN

thousand feet above the altitude of, Mount Washington.
Behind and in front of my ship, here as black as ink under
the shadows of the hills, there turned to silver by the full
moon’s rays, flows the Strait of Magellan, that salt-water
river in which, moved by the tides, the two great oceans
rush together and clasp their hands to bear up the com-
merce of the world.

The Strait of Magellan makes the passage between the
oceans shorter by nearly one thousand miles. Cape
Horn, on an island some two hundred miles south, is
surrounded by waters which are always tossed about by
terrible storms. To-night the Magellan is almost as quiet
as a mill pond, and our ship steams along as smoothly
as the boat which carries the hero away in the Swan Song
of Lohengrin.

We are now about midway between the Atlantic and the
Pacific. We entered the Strait by what is known as
Smyth’s Channel, opposite Desolation Island, about
thirty miles from Cape Pillar, which marks its western
end. We could see the two massive rocks of the cape as
we turned to the eastward. Their steep sides tower up
for a distance of fifteen hundred feet, and when the air
is clear they are in sight for many miles.

Beginning at Cape Pillar, the Strait runs southeast to
Cape Froward, then turns to the northeast, widening here
and there as it goes, until it ends at the Atlantic between
Cape Virgenes and Cape Holy Ghost. The channel is
three hundred and sixty-five miles long, and its width
varies from two to twenty-four miles. At times our vessel
has been within a stone’s throw of the shore, and again,
in the misty air, where the passage widened, the waters
seemed almost to bound the horizon. This is so only in

103

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

eastern parts of the channel, on both sides of which the
shores of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego are low. In the
west there is little else than mountains, which are now
snow-dusted and in many cases laden with vast glaciers
sliding slowly down to the sea.

Below the Strait of Magellan there is a group of many
islands, of which the smallest are mountain peaks rising
above the waves and the largest is the Island of Tierra del
Fuego, which is bigger than many of our American states.
It has mountains and valleys, great forests and extensive
plains, which have been transformed into some of the big-
gest sheep farms of the world. North of the Strait lies the
end of southern Patagonia on the east, and on the west
a continuation of the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego.
These islands, as well as the Strait and almost all of Tierra
del Fuego, belong to Chile. The Chilean government has
surveyed the channels and harbours of the passage, and
lights and buoys have been erected to aid navigation,
but some of the region is almost as unknown as it was
when Ferdinand Magellan, the great sailor, discovered the
Strait for Spain in 1520. The land and the people have
been misrepresented by passers-by from Darwin down to
within recent years, and it is only lately that opportunities
have been offered for careful investigation. Even now the
savages I have seen here are less known than the tribes of
central Africa, and not all of the islands have been explored.
The sheep farmer, the gold digger, and the government
vessels are, however, making headway, and within a few
years this great archipelago will be a terra incognita no
longer.

The generally accepted belief regarding southern Pat-
agonia and Tierra del Fuego is that they are something

104

THROUGH THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN

like the coasts of Greenland or those of the Arctic seas.
The geographies represent them as wastes of ice and
snow, desolate, forbidding, and terrible to the traveller.
During this voyage I have spent several days winding in
and out of the channels along the west coast of lower
Patagonia, and have been rewarded by a series of moving
pictures that cannot be surpassed.

Darwin compared the glaciers of Sarmiento in Tierra
del Fuego to one hundred frozen Niagaras. The waters
along the lower end of western Patagonia present com-
binations which make one think of a hundred Lake Comos,
Lake Genevas, and Lake Lucernes linked together in one
ever-widening, ever-changing river. Here are the beau-
ties of the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence heighten-
ed by snow-capped mountains kissed by the sun, and
mighty glaciers sliding down into masses of dark green
vegetation. Here are giant rocks, cathedral-shaped,
covered with moss, rising sheer up from the water for a
thousand feet; mountains, their heads lost in the clouds,
their feet buried in the sea; narrow gorges, in which the
steamer must tack this way and that as it winds about
between islands of green and islands of rock resting in
lakelets; fields of floating ice, through which the boat
crashes; narrow fiords, in which the black water is three
thousand feet deep, and, in short, such a variety of scenic
wonders of clouds, mountains, and sea that I doubt
whether their like can be found in the world. Suppose
you could take the most picturesque parts of the Andes,
the Himalayas, and the Alps, sink them up to their
necks in dark blue water, pull the cloud masses down with
them into the sea, and wrap their rugged sides far up from
the water’s edge with a wonderful mantle of green, now

105

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

brilliant in the sunlight, now frosted with snow, and again
so filled with ice that it lies in terraces up their sides, and
you will have some idea of these lands at the southern
end of our hemisphere.

But | despair of giving a vivid picture of our voyage
through this archipelago. It lasted three days and was a
series of wonders. All I shall attempt is to take you
with me through some few places by a transcript of my
notes made upon the ground. We start in the evening
in the Bay of Coronel, near Concepcién, on the west
coast of Chile. When we awake next morning we are
far out in the Pacific. The steamer is rolling, the white
caps are dancing over the waves, and away off to the
eastward we can make out the faint blue outline of south
Chile. A day later, in storm and rain, we steam past the
long, narrow island of Chiloe, which the government is
trying to colonize, and on the evening of the third day we
enter the wide Gulf of Pefias and come to anchor at the
entrance of Smyth’s Channel.

The water is still. The steamer moves slowly, and
we seem to be in a great river rather than in the
ocean. We are sailing among the clouds through the
water-filled ravines of some of the greatest of the world’s
mountains. On our right are grass-clad islands. On
our left are rugged, jagged peaks rising in all shapes out of
the sea. There is one that reminds me of the Pyramid of
Cheops, and there is another that is a fair likeness of the
smashed-nosed Sphinx. In front the hills are climbing
over one another like a troop of giants playing leap frog,
and farther on they rise upward in fort-like walls of green
a thousand feet high, losing themselves in that misty
white cloud which rests upon them.

106

THROUGH THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN

As we proceed the passage narrows and widens. Now
we are in a lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains,
now in a canyon, and now we sail by a break in the moun-
tain walls, a deep fiord with moss-green sides snow-
flecked a thousand feet up and filled with black water a
thousand feet deep. As we look the sun breaks its way
into the gorge and turns the water to silver. It scatters
diamonds in the snow. Over there is a glacier, a great
green mass shining out upon the ragged sides of a snowy
mountain. The sun strikes it and it is a bed of emeralds
in a silver setting.

Before us is an ever-varying panorama of sky and sea
and land. We sail out of the sunlight into snow storms;
then out of the snow into sun again. Now the sky is
almost blue overhead, sprinkled with fleecy clouds.
Cloud masses nestle in the velvety laps of the hills; they
wrap themselves about the snowy peaks as though to
hide them, and there they stoop down and press tantaliz-
ing kisses upon their icy lips.. Upon the snow-dotted hills
and dark water are dashes of silver where the rays of the
sun have penetrated the clouds. The changing light
makes the channel on one side of the ship black; on the
other side it is a beautiful yellowish green; and behind, the
ship has left a path of molten silver shining in the sun.

The hills change even as the water. Now they are
dark. Now the sun brushes them with its rays and the
ferns and moss and trees brighten. The ragged volcanic
rocks stand out, and through the green and the black,
falling hundreds and sometimes thousands of feet, are
silvery cascades. These waterfalls are to be seen all
along these inland channels. They come from the glaciers
and the mountain snows.

107

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

On our third day in the channel I saw one of the strang-
est atmospheric effects I have ever beheld. The mountain-
walled river had widened and we were again coming to
narrows, when over our pathway in front of us a great rain-
bow bridge flung from the snowy summit of a low moun-
tain in the south to the top of another mountain almost
opposite on the north of the channel. It was a splendid
opal arch of the gods founded on pedestals of frosted
silver. As we approached, the rainbow faded, the sky was
blue overhead, but a curtain of clouds had risen up from
the water. When I first saw it I thought it was a field
of icebergs. It was as white as snow and it extended
upward to what seemed a height of several hundred feet,
stretching across the channel from mountain to moun-
tain. Above, the sky was still clear and the only other
clouds to be seen were those hovering over the mountain
peaks. We sailed out of the light right into this cloud
wall, out of the dry air into a mist so thick that we could
almost wash our hands in it. A half hour later we were
again underaclearsky. At times the masts of the steamer
were in the clouds and the deck clear and dry. Again the
clouds would form a roof over the channel, and again the
bases of the hills would be hidden and we could look over
the clouds at the green and snow above.

It seems strange to think of green moss, green trees,
and a matted mass of green vegetation, amid the snows
and glaciers. That is what we have here. The glaciers
slide down into the green, and the snow falls and melts
upon it all winter long. Even in the jungles of India |
have not seen so thick a growth of trees and plants as
along the west coast of Patagonia. We havea chance to
go on shore every afternoon when we anchor for the

108

THROUGH THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN

night. Pushing our way into the country is, however,
impossible. The trees are evergreens, generally small,
but so dense that one could walk on their tops on snow-
shoes. A bed of moss covers the ground waist deep
about them, and great ferns, with leaves as long as
a man’s arm, extend in every open or rocky spot. The
earth is saturated with moisture. The mould and rotting
wood of centuries cover it, and one sinks in and stumbles
about more than in an Irish bog. :

It is only on the higher parts of the mountains that
vegetation ceases, and only there that the climate is such
as to produce glaciers and perpetual snow. The icebergs
that we see in the channel came from these glaciers.
They are among the great glaciers of the world, many of
them surpassing, it is said, the largest in the Alps. In
Tierra del Fuego they line the waterways in places with
walls of ice a thousand feet high, and ships must sail care-
fully not to be struck by the icebergs, which in chunks of a
thousand tons and upward break off with a noise like
thunder and fall into the sea. Icebergs often fill Smyth’s
Channel, so that it is impossible to get through. This
was the case last year, when one of the steamers was
forced to go back and when the ship upon which I now am
had its bow crushed in by the icebergs. This glacial
ice is not like that in our rivers and lakes. It is as hard
as a rock and of a crystalline green.

On our second day in the archipelago we stopped the
steamer, lassoed an iceberg, and towed it up to the ship.
It was a little berg, not bigger than a city lot, but it was
of a beautiful opalescent green with a frosted silver top.
It had many angles and projections. The steward and a
boatload of sailors attacked it with crowbars and broke

109

THE WAIL OF THESHEMISEHERE

off enough ice to last for the rest of the voyage. One of
the great log chains used for hoisting heavy cargo was
first coupled about the corner of one of these ice masses,
then a lever in the engine room was pulled and a section
of the iceberg was broken off and raised by a derrick
to the deck of the vessel. We must have taken on a
hundred tons of ice.

During our voyage through these strange islands we have
seen but few animals and birds. Now and then we have
passed a small school of seals, which pop their heads out of
the water and take a peep at the steamer as it goes by.
We have seen half-a-dozen whales, and occasionally an
albatross or a gull.

We have had, however, a number of visits from the wild
savages of the Magellans, the naked Indians of the Pata-
gonian channels, who are among the least-known wild
men of the world. They are different from the Onas
and Yaghans of Tierra del Fuego, with whom missionaries
have worked, and several of whom, years ago, were
carried to England. These Indians are known as the Ala-
calufes. There are only about five hundred of them.
They have no chiefs or tribal relations. Each family
lives to itself.

The Alacalufes are strictly canoe Indians, living almost
entirely upon the sea. They are found only in these
straits and off the coasts of southern Patagonia. They
sleep sometimes on land in little wigwams three feet high,
made by bending over the branches of trees and tying
them together. They build a fire in front and crawl into
them for the night. Their canoes are well constructed.
They are about fifteen feet long, three or four feet wide,
and perhaps two feet deep. They are made of bark sewn

110

The passage through the Strait of Magellan is one of the most splendid
» scenic voyages of the world, with frozen Niagaras sliding down the green-
forested mountains and cathedral-like rocks towering one thousand feet

above the water.

Punta Arenas, the world’s southernmost city, thrives on the sheep
industry. It annually exports millions of pounds of wool noted for the fact
that it washes very white and takes delicate dyes exceptionally well.

THROUGH THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN

together with sinew. They are cross-ribbed, and can be
easily paddled. In the centre of each boat is a fire built
on some earth, about which sit such of the family as
are not paddling the boat. Queer-looking people they are.
Most of them wear no clothes whatever, and are apparent-
ly comfortable amid the snows of winter with only a coat
of seal- or fish-oil upon their skins. They are glad to get
such clothing as they can beg from white men, and they
come about the ship and ask for cast-off garments, food,
and tobacco. Some we have seen were as naked as Adam
and Eve before the fall. Others wore bits of old clothes.

One man, who brought his family alongside in a canoe,
had on a short vest, open at the front, and a tiny apron as
big as a lady’s handkerchief tied to a string about his
waist. His favourite wife, clad in a string of beads, sat
in the boat near the fire, with a naked boy of two sucking
his fingers as he leaned against her bare legs; his
other wife, a buxom girl in her teens, held an unswaddled
baby to her breast with one hand while she paddled the
boat with the other. I was shivering in my overcoat as
1 looked at these people, but they did not seem cold or
miserable. The children were fat. The young mother
at the end of the boat had on nothing but a cast-off sack
coat, which she had thrown over her shoulders to cover
partially herself and her baby. As she paddled this kept
falling off, exposing her person and that of the infant.

The men and women were rather under- than over-
sized. They had faces somewhat like those of our Indians.
The men’s faces were dirty, evidently from paint, and the
naked brave in the vest had a thin black moustache. They
had black hair; that of the women hung long, and that of
the men was cut off so that it just covered the ears and

III

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

fell down in a thick black fringe, or bang, over their eyes.
Their skins were of a coffee-brown colour, and all had
very white teeth, which they showed again and again as
they laughed. Their voices were not unpleasant, and
they mimicked us as we called out to them.

The man in the vest had two or three otter skins, which
one of the officers of the ship tried to buy. As he would
not come on board, the officer crawled down the side of the
ship above the boat and held on there by a rope while he
tried to make the trade. He had a big butcher knife
in one hand while he held on to the rope with the other.
He wanted the savage to give him two skins for the knife,
but the Alacaluf thought one was enough. He would not
give up the skin until he had the knife in his hand, and in
the trade he displayed a wonderful shrewdness and ability
to bargain. Of course, neither party could understand
the other, and neither would trust the other. The only
things that can be used in trading with these people are
bright cloth, beads, tobacco, and knives. They do not
know the use of money, and would rather have a jack-
knife or a hatchet than a genuine gold brick. They were
evidently afraid to come on board, and | am told they are
by no means friendly to strangers, and will kill them if
they can attack them with safety. They use slings to
defend themselves, but do not hunt.

The food for the family is usually obtained by the
women, of whom each man has one or more, as he can .
get them. They bring in fish, mussels, and now and then a
fox, seal, or otter. The women fish with lines, but with-
out hooks. A little chunk of meat is tied to the end of
the line, and when the fish has swallowed this it is jerked
into the canoe. The Alacalufes are also fond of whale

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THROUGH THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN

meat. A dead whale is cut in pieces and buried, to be
eaten in its various stages of decomposition as long as it
lasts. They understand what tobacco is, and those we
have met have been as anxious to get it as food. They
had but a few foreign words, one of which was “Frau
Lehman,’ the term by which they designate all other
people, and the two others, “galleta,’’ the Spanish word
for sweet cakes, and ‘“‘tabac,”’ the German for tobacco. -

£E3

CHAPTER XVI
THE SOUTHERNMOST CITY OF THE WORLD

UNTA ARENAS is distinguished as the south-
ernmost city of the world. It is at the tip
of the South American continent on the northern
coast of the Strait of Magellan, midway between

the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, and more than a hun-
dred miles north of Cape Horn, The city is the commer-
cial capital of a vast region of sea and land that is but
little known to the rest of the world. From where I am
writing I can see the blue forests of Tierra del Fuego
on the opposite side of the Strait and behind me, stretch-
ing away for hundreds of miles to the north, are the moun-
tains of Patagonia with myriad flocks of sheep grazing on
their slopes.

There is no city of any size within one thousand miles
of Punta Arenas and its only connection with the rest of
the world is its radio station, which daily receives wireless
messages from Santiago, Buenos Aires, and even more
distant points. The radio stations of Chile are rapidly
increasing. I have seen their towers at every important
port on the long coast from Arica, on the edge of Peru,
to the Strait of Magellan. One has even been erected on
Juan Fernandez Island, and the home of Robinson Crusoe
now has ears for the voices of all the world.

All of the supplies for Punta Arenas are brought in by
the steamers passing through the Strait of Magellan.

14

THE SOUTHERNMOST CITY

The Chilean government has proposed to extend its rail-
road down here, but it will be a long time before the Longi-
tudinal System can be pushed through the Andes to the
Strait, and during this generation, at least, Punta Arenas
will have to rely upon ships. The city has a big business
as a coaling and supply station for the vessels passing
through. She charges all that the traffic will bear for
every kind of goods, and when our battleship, the Oregon,
coaled here on her long way around the hemisphere
from San Francisco at the outbreak of the Spanish-Ameri-
can War, she had to pay a fancy price for coal.

The port is free and there is much interchange of goods
by the steamers and sailing vessels that pass through the
Strait. Just now there are English and United States
steamers in the harbour loading and discharging freight,
and a ship from New Zealand with a cargo of frozen sheep
for London has just come to anchor. There are regular
steamers that ply between Buenos Aires and Valparaiso
through the Strait, and ships of two large British lines call
here fortnightly. There are ten villages in the country
about which can be reached by automobile or by coast
steamers, and something like one thousand miles of roads
have been built or are under construction.

Punta Arenas is the capital of the Territory of the
Magellans, the southernmost political division of Chile.
This territory consists of the southern end of the range
of the Andes, running from a little below Valdivia to the
Strait of Magellan, the islands at the western end of the
Strait, and most of Tierra del Fuego. It comprises about
one fourth of all Chile, having a land area nearly equal
_ to that of our state of Missouri and a population about
equal to that of Alaska. The Magellans might be called

115

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

the Alaska of Chile although they are only one ninth
the size of our great land of the North. Their climate is
like that of southeastern Alaska.

Punta Arenas is an up-to-date municipality. Twenty
years ago the greater part of it was still in the woods,
Stumps stood in the principal streets, and in the rainy
season the roads were rivers of mud. To-day the town
is well paved, and it has a plaza surrounded by good
houses and stores. The streets are lighted by electricity,
and there are churches, schools, and clubs. It is the home
of the farthest-south newspaper in the world, the Magellan
Times, a thoroughly up-to-date sheet in every way. The
value of the city property is now estimated at more than
ten million dollars.

The people of Punta Arenas are of a dozen different
nations, and come from all parts of the world. There are
English and Germans as well as many Danes, Norwegians,
and Swedes, who have a large share in the navigation of
the Strait. There are Australians and Italians, Chileans
and Indians. Some of the most successful business men
are Scotchmen, and the Scotch also have large interests in
the sheep industry.

Until within recent years the Territory of the Magellans
was supposed to be worthless. It was so near the South
Pole that many thought it all ice and snow, and its moun-
tainous character was such that no one imagined the land
could ever be of any value. To-day this region has de-
veloped a live-stock-raising industry that bulks large in the
assets of Chile. It has one sheep-raising company,
capitalized at more than seven millions, which is now
producing nine or ten million pounds of wool every year.
This company owns two million acres of land, and its

116

THE SOUTHERNMOST CITY

sheep number more than twelve hundred thousand. It
has also twenty-five thousand cattle, and more than nine
thousand horses. It sheared more than a million sheep
last year, and the average fleece weighed almost eight
pounds. It has more than a half million lambs, and
ships vast quantities of frozen mutton to England.

La Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego, or the
Tierra del Fuego Exploration Society, owns sixteen hun-
dred thousand sheep besides cattle and horses. It has
its own meat-canning factory and a plant for producing
tallow by boiling down sheep fat.

A freezing plant has recently been installed there, and
there is another freezer at the Rio Seco to which one
hundred and fifty thousand sheep are annually shipped.
The yearly output of these two plants is almost four
hundred thousand carcasses, and the tallow works con-
nected with them have marketed more than three quarters
of a million pounds of that article.

Sheep were first brought to the Strait region in 1878.
They were imported from the Falkland Islands, which lie
about two hundred miles to the east, opposite the entrance
to this great ocean passage. Within seven years the flocks
numbered forty thousand head. As the value of the
lands for sheep raising became known, farmers and stock-
men came from Australia and Europe, and developed what
is now an enormous and profitable business. Sheep are
pastured not only on the mainland north of the Strait,
but also on Tierra del Fuego on the southern side of the
passage. This great island belongs partly to Chile and
partly to Argentina. The greater part of Tierra del
Fuego is made up of plains and wide stretches of moorland
covered with grass, which is green in the summer and turns

117

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

reddish brown as winter comes on. This grass furnishes
good grazing all the year ’round. In the winter the sheep
sometimes dig down through the snow, which, as a rule,:
melts soon after falling. The grasses of the Strait are,
noted for their richness and sweetness. They are excellent.
for the production of both mutton and wool and would feed
far more stock than they do were it not for the rats. As
it is, this pest is so prevalent that it now takes three or
more acres to support one sheep. The rats not only
eat the grass, but they tunnel the earth to such an extent
that it is impossible to drive over the plains with a wagon,
and on horseback one has to ride very carefully. Cattle
are used as rat exterminators. They are driven over the
ground and trample the rats in their burrows.

Among the other enemies of the sheep farmer in Tierra
del Fuego are vultures, foxes, wild dogs, panthers, and
the Ona Indians. The sheep are so fat that if one of them
falls down and rolls upon its back it cannot turn over of
itself and simply lies there and kicks. The vultures are
always watching the sheep, and when such an accident hap-
pens they attack the helpless animal and pick out its eyes.
After this it may live some days, but as soon as it is dead
the vultures finish their work by tearing its flesh from the
bones. The foxes of Tierra del Fuego are much like
wolves. They areas big as dogs. They attack the sheep
and drive them into the streams where they drown.
There are wild dogs in the forests of this region, which
come out in packs of from ten to thirty and worry the
sheep. Then there are the panthers, one of which often
kills a hundred sheep in a night. The Onas will steal and
drive off five hundred sheep at a time. These Indians
will cut a bunch of sheep out of a flock and drive them off

118

A cleared strip through the forest marks the boundary between the
Chilean and Argentine portions of Tierra del Fuego. In the division, the
best of the level sheep lands went to Chile, while Argentina got the more
mountainous and wooded sections.

Argentina sends some of her convicts down here to the very tip of the
tail of our hemisphere at Ushuaia on the bleak southern coast of Tierra de!

ors

Fuego.

THE SOUTHERNMOST CITY

into the woods. Many of the sheep are lost as they are
run over bogs and through streams, and when they reach
their stopping place it may be that only two thirds of the
number remain. Of these the savages kill what they
can eat and drown the rest. They bury the dead sheep in
the bed of acreek or pond. After a week or so, when the
flesh is pretty well decomposed, they come back, dig it
up, and eat it.

The sheep farms of Tierra del Fuego are much like
those of Australia. They are fenced with wire, and the
sheep are kept in large paddocks, some of which are as
big as an average American township. The ordinary
flock contains about two thousand head, and each flock
has its own shepherd, aided by dogs. The dogs are Scotch
collies, so intelligent that they seem almost human. They
will pick any sheep from a flock at the command of their
master, who directs them by a motion of his hand which
way to go. If he waves to the front, they know they are
to go ahead. If he throws his hand to the rear they come
back, and the shepherd’s hand held up in the air brings
them to a standstill.

Most of the shepherds are Scotchmen, who come to the
Strait of Magellan on five-year contracts. They receive
from thirty to forty dollars a month, and have in addition
house rent, fuel, and meat. Their houses are two- or three-
room shacks scattered over the farms. The fuel comes
from the woods, and their meat is mutton from the flocks
they herd.

The most important part of the year at the Strait of
Magellan is when the shearing is done. This season begins
in January, and on the big ranches may last for two
months. Much of the work is done by professional

119

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE
shearers, although the shepherd comes in to help handle
the animals. On some of the farms this work is paid for
by the fleece. When a man begins to shear he is given a
book in which are recorded the number of animals he
shears during the week and the amount to his credit.
If any dispute arises it is to be settled by a committee
composed equally of the owners and employees. The
company furnishes the shears, of which every man gets
three pairs at the start and an additional pair for each
thousand animals.

Latterly flocks in Tierra del Fuego have been sheared
by machines. A set of knives or clippers, like those used
by barbers, is attached to a cord running on an overhead
pulley and the shearer moves these clippers over the skin
of the sheep, cutting off the wool. This is said to make
a cleaner and closer job and does not cut the skin. After
shearing, the fleeces are carefully spread out, being laid
one on top of the other, and packed in bales of five hundred
pounds each. Most of the wool goes to the English
markets.

The average fleece now produced in Tierra del Fuego
weighs seven and a half pounds and upward, which is
much above the average in the United States. The wool
is of good quality, having a staple of three or four inches
and selling at the same price as the wool of New Zealand.
The sheep are not washed and the wool is exported in its
greasy state. Tierra del Fuego wool is especially valued
for its snowy whiteness when washed, and because it will
take the most delicate dyes.

120

CHAPTER XVII
TIERRA DEL FUEGO

HE archipelago of Tierra del Fuego contains

as much land as Kansas. It is wider from east

to west than from Cleveland to Chicago, and

from north to south it is longer than from New
York to Boston. Most of the hundreds of islands are
wooded and mountainous, but a few of them have valleys
and plains covered with rich grass on which sheep and
cattle rapidly grow fat. The largest islands are Onisin, or
King Charles Southland, or Tierra del Fuego proper;
Desolation Island, which lies near the western entrance
to the Strait, and along which I coasted for miles on my
way to Punta Arenas; the Isle of St. Ives, Clarence Island,
and Dawson Island, a little farther to the eastward, and
the large islands of Hoste and Navarino on the south.
Cape Horn itself is on one of the small islands on the
southernmost part of the archipelago.

The chief island is Tierra del Fuego which is _ half
as big as Ohio. Chile owns nearly all of the islands of
the archipelago and most of the sheep lands of Tierra
del Fuego. The lands of the Chilean part have been
taken up within the past few years under leases from the
Chilean government. The Argentine portion is not so
well settled, owing to the difficulty of access and uncer-
tainty as to the boundary. Nearly all the southern and
eastern portions of the island are plains, wide stretches of

121

THERA OFS tHE HEMISPHERE

moorland, covered with grass. Around the west and
south coast is a rim of mountains, many of which rise
steeply from the water, and which probably gave Darwin
the basis for his statement that there was not a level
acre of ground upon the whole island. The plains are in
the interior. Running midway between north and
south, and extending across the country, there is an
elevated tableland and beyond this to the north is a
second elevated plain.

It seems strange to think of dense vegetation in Tierra
del Fuego. One might almost as soon believe that grass
could be raised on an iceberg. The truth is, however,
that the winter climate of Tierra del Fuego is milder than
that of Canada. The lowlands are seldom covered with
snow for more than a few days at a time, though one is in
sight of snow and glaciers on the mountains all the year
round. The climate varies, but it is generally cool,
cloudy, and windy. The most objectionable feature
is the wind, which at times blows for days at a stretch
and sends the chilly air through one’s bones in penetrating
blasts. Tierra del Fuego is in the latitude corresponding
to that of Labrador, but so are a large part of England and
a big slice of Holland; and I imagine that, barring these
winds, “Tierra del,” as they have nicknamed the island,
has winters more like those of northern Europe than those
of Labrador.

‘The vegetation is that of the Temperate rather than of
the Frigid Zone. The mountain slopes, up to about one
thousand feet, are walled with a growth of trees, ferns, and
mosses so dense that it is almost impossible to get through
the entanglement. On the sides of the steeper mountains
the trees, instead of growing straight up, hug the earth;

122

TIERRA DEL FUEGO

so that a tree, with a trunk as thick as a man’s waist,
may be only three feet high, but spreads over a large
piece of ground. This is probably due to the mountain
snow, which presses down the trees and at the same time
keeps them warm enough so that they can grow.

The most common tree here at the tail end of creation
is the beech. There are vast forests of Antarctic beeches
in Chilean Tierra del Fuego, the trees of which are eighty
feet tall and six feet thick. They make excellent lumber,
and some are now being cut down and shipped to Buenos
Aires. One species of the beech tree is of our evergreen
variety; another is a common beech like that of our Cen-
tral States. There are also trees of the magnolia species.
There are twenty-five different varieties of shrubs and
bushes besides many wild berries. Wild strawberries
of great size and delicious flavour are found in their sea-
son, and there are also wild grapes and celery. Ferns
are to be seen almost everywhere. The sheep farmers
raise cabbages, potatoes, turnips, and peas in their gardens,
and they tell me that in the spring and summer the pas-
tures are dotted with wild flowers.

Tierra del Fuego has been called the “‘Klondike of South
America.”’ So far, however, there is no justification for
the term. There is much gold, no doubt; but as yet no
large quantities have been discovered, and that found is
difficult to mine. The gold is all placer gold; some of
it is in the shape of nuggets as large as marrowfat peas,
but the greater part is in leaflets or scales.

Most of the mines are in the southern part of Tierra
del Fuego and the islands adjacent. The gold is found on
the shores, the clay containing it running down under
the water and being exposed only at low tide. The

125

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

beaches are covered with shingle and sand, which must
be removed before the bed rock is reached. At the
Slogget Bay diggings, for instance, there is six feet of
sand and gravel above the bed rock. This has to be
shovelled off, and at the next tide the gold-bearing clay
is again covered. Almost similar conditions exist at the
washings on the island of Navarino and elsewhere. From
what I have been able to learn there are, I should judge,
only a few places where gold has been found in profitable
deposits, and these are nothing in comparison with the
great gold mines of our Western States. Sluice boxes with
machinery pumping the water from the sea and gathering
the gold dust with mercury and copper plates have been
used by those who have worked these deposits. Most
of the mining, however, is spasmodic and uncertain.
The territory is exceedingly difficult to reach, and pros-
pecting is coupled with such hardships and expense in
the way of getting supplies that the American miner had
better stay at home.

But let us look at the savages who live at the lower end
of our hemisphere. | have already described the Alacalu-
fes or canoe Indians, found on the waterways of the
western part of the archipelago. Tierra del Fuego and the
larger islands are inhabited by two tribes, each of which
is different from any other Indian tribe of South America.

The Onas are found chiefly in northern and central
Tierra del Fuego; they are very savage and wage war on
the whites. Once two Chilean naval officers were killed
by them while surveying one of the smaller islands. When
found, the Chilenos were naked, their clothing having been
stripped off, and in one of the bodies were twenty-five
arrows with glass heads.

124

TIERRA DEL FUEGO

The shepherds are said to shoot the Ona Indians at
sight when they become especially troublesome, for they
say it is cheaper to kill than to civilize them or break them
of their sheep-stealing. But the Roman Catholics have a
mission station on Dawson Island, not far from Tierra del
Fuego, on which are some Onas, and are doing what they
can for these primitive people. In their natural state the
Onas as a rule go naked. In some instances, however,
the missionaries have been able to induce them to wear
some clothes.

The Onas sometimes wear a strip of guanaco skin over
the shoulders. The adults have breech cloths, but the
children wear nothing save the coating of fish oil with
which they are liberally smeared. The oil serves to keep
out the cold; and so far I have yet to see one of these
Indians shiver, although in my winter flannels and over-
coat I myself have been none too warm. The Tierra del
Fuegians have been painted by travellers as wretched and
miserable in the extreme. They appear to be sleek, fat,
and well fed, and are generally good natured. The Ala-
calufes | saw wore a perpetual grin, and the Onas and
Yaghans are, when among themselves, full of good humour.

An Ona house is merely a hole in the ground with a wind-
break of branches or trees bent down and tied together
over it. The hole is about three feet deep and just big
enough to contain the Indian and his family. They use
it chiefly at night, crawling in and cuddling up together,
with their dogs lying about and over them for warmth.
Such fires as they make are for cooking, and are in front
of and outside the dug-out sleeping-place. They do not
like to stay more than a night or so in the same place,
as they have an idea that the devil, or evil spirit, is after

125

THE TAI OF STHE si EMISPHERE

them, and that they must move on or he will catch them.
The Onas are of a good size, though not such giants as
travellers have pictured them. The men are usually about
six feet tall, and the women about five feet five inches.
The Yaghans, who are all short-legged from living in
canoes, are much smaller. Were it not for their stomachs,
the Onas might be said to be well formed. They are
straight, deep-chested, and muscular. The women when
young are plump and well rounded, with fine necks and
breasts. They are, however, great gluttons, and some-
times gorge themselves so that their stomachs are stretched
tight like drumheads and stick out from their bodies.
They have lighter skins than our Indians and high cheek-
bones, flat noses, straight, dark eyes, and rather full,
sensuous lips. Their hair is straight and black, and among
the men the fashion is to have it singed at the crown,
to form a sort of tonsure. The women let their hair
grow, and it hangs down over their shoulders. The men
do not have beards until late in life, and as they do not
like to appear old they usually pull out the stray hairs on
their faces. An Ona seldom has a beard before he is
thirty-five or forty.

The Onas apparently do not care whether their food
is fresh or not. Before the advent of sheep farming in
Tierra del Fuego, they lived on fish, fungi, and guanacos.
Guanacos are wild animals of the same genus as the llama.
They seem to be a cross between the deer and the camel,
and are about the size of a very large sheep. The Onas
run them down with their dogs and follow them also on
foot. They are fast runners, and take six-foot strides, so
an Argentine man who lived on the islands has told me.
They eat the decayed flesh of stranded whales which

126

The six-foot Ona Indian of Tierra del Fuego was the “Patagonian
giant” of early travellers’ tales. With bow and arrow he hunts the guanaco
for food and clothing, or, when he can, steals sheep from the white men.

To those who think of Tierra del Fuego as a frigid land it is surprising

to find its mountain slopes up to about a thousand feet densely wooded.
Its great forests of Antarctic birch furnish excellent lumber.

WERRA DEL: FUEGO

they find on the shore, but, as a rule, do not go out
in canoes to fish as do the Yaghans and the Alacalufes.
They also make traps to catch game. They use only
bows and arrows in war and for hunting. The arrows
used to be tipped with flint, but now they are pointed
with pieces of glass made out of the bottles thrown
from the steamers passing through the Strait of Magellan.

The Ona women weave very pretty rush baskets of a
bowl shape. They cure the skins which their husbands
bring in from the hunt and sew them together with sinews
into robes or rugs. The Onas, I am told, have no Great
Spirit, or God, as our Indians have. They practise
polygamy, one man having several wives, whom he buys
of their fathers at as low prices as he can.

' As for the Yaghan Indians—before the whites came there
were something like three thousand of them. They were
described by sea captains as a healthy, hearty, naked,
savage race. The English early established a mission in
south Tierra del Fuego and persuaded them to put on
clothes. It is claimed that with the wearing of clothes
came consumption and pneumonia, and that these ail-
ments have reduced their number to less than five hun-
dred. Both Onas and Yaghans are fast dying out.

They live in groups of about thirty families. They are
not cannibals, as has been charged. Their principal
food consists of molluscs, fish, seals, birds, strawberries,
and fungi. Their women cook these things in different
ways; they roast birds on the coals by putting red-hot
stones inside of them; they bake eggs by breaking a small
hole in one end and then standing them upright in the
embers before the fire, turning them round and round to
make them cook evenly. They bake the blood of animals,

127

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

but, as a rule, eat their vegetables raw. The women are
both fishers and hunters. The men make the canoes, but
the women paddle them; the latter are good at the oars
and usually are better and more fearless swimmers than
the men.

One of the wonderful things about the Yaghans is their
language. With no written language, they yet havea
vocabulary of about forty thousand words. Mr. Bridges,
a missionary who made a Yaghan-English dictionary, gives
this as the number. Shakespeare’s vocabulary, it is
known, contained only twenty-four thousand words.

128

CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

HE Falklands are among the little-known islands

of the Atlantic Ocean, but their name was on the

lips of everyone early in the World War when the

British destroyed, along their shores, the German
squadron which had wiped out Cradock and his com-
mand off the coast of Chile.

The Falklands lie about three hundred miles east of
Cape Virgenes, at the Atlantic entrance to the Strait of
Magellan, less than a day’s steaming for one of England’s
great war vessels. They are even nearer the track of
ships going round Cape Horn. With the exception of
Punta Arenas, which belongs to Chile, and which by the
neutrality laws may not furnish coal except in times of
peace, the only coaling port near the islands is at Monte-
video, a thousand miles to the northward, the next
nearest, perhaps, being the Cape of Good Hope, at the
lower extremity of the African continent more than four
thousand miles away.

The islands were discovered by an English commander
named Davis, in 1592, and two years later were sighted by
Sir Richard Hawkins, who named them the Maiden
Islands in honour of Queen Elizabeth. Later on the
Spanish government claimed them, and the Argentine
Republic, as the heir of Spain, looked upon them as her
property. In 1833 England again took possession of

129

“Sooner shall these mountains crumble to dust than the people of
Argentina and Chile break the peace which they have sworn to maintain
at the feet of Christ, the Redeemer.” So reads the inscription on the
Christ of the Andes.

IN THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

in the world are feeding and from them upward of a
million dollars’ worth of wool is exported every year. One
company alone owns two hundred and forty thousand
sheep, and the man who owns less than twenty-five
thousand is considered a small farmer indeed.

Outside of sheep raising there are no other industries.
I was told there were not one hundred pigs in all the islands
together ; and although the grass is good for cattle, there
are but few in the Falklands. Not enough wheat is
raised to make a Maryland biscuit, and the only signs of
agriculture are the little garden patches of cabbages,
potatoes, and turnips grown in patches back of the houses
of the shepherds on the moors, at the capital, and-atecne
other small settlements scattered here and there over the
‘two chief islands.

The Falklands are a veritable cave of AZolus. The
cold winds blow almost all day long and every day;
it is said they sometimes blow the vegetables out of the
ground. They blow so hard that not a tree can live,
and there are not enough bushes to furnish switches for a
country school. The Governor told me that it was his
ambition to raise at least one tree, and that he had already
made several attempts, but in vain.

The pasturage, however, grows luxuriantly, and the
sheep keep fat, if the land is not overstocked. When
they can find it, the sheep feed on a curious grass, which
is a tonic as well as a food for the animals eating it. It
is, in fact, a sort of a vegetable cocktail. It is called
tussock grass, and has a stalk from four to six feet high
and blades about seven feet long. The plants grow close
together in bunches, as many as two hundred and fifty
roots springing from one plant. Animals eat the roots

131

THE TAIL(OF THE HEMISPHERE

as well as the leaves, and, feeding upon them, fatten rap-
idly. The roots are even eaten by men, and it is said
that two Americans once lived upon them for fourteen
months on one of the smaller islands. The roots of the
old plants decay and raise the grass upward, so that it
grows upon a sort of cushion of manure. Some of these
cushions are six feet high and five feet in diameter, so that
the grass springing from them makes them look from a
distance like a grove of low palm trees. The tussock
grass grows along the coast even down to high-water
mark. It is fast disappearing, however, as the sheep are
so fond of it that they eat it far down into the roots.

Another odd plant which grows in the bogs looks like a
stone. It forms bunches from three to eight feet tall
and is as hard as a rock; indeed, it is so hard that one
cannot cut it with a knife. On hot days a pale yellow
gum comes out on its surface, and a rich aromatic odour
fills the surrounding air. It is known as the balsam
bog.

It is always cloudy in the Falklands. The air is moist,
and the outlook is dreary in the extreme. Imagine a dull,
leaden sky hanging low over reddish-brown moors out
of which, here and there, jut the ragged teeth of white rock
masses. The land is gently rolling, with here and there a
ragged hill. The soilis black and full of peat. In places it
is streaked with little streams and spotted with treacherous
bogs, in which horses and men are sometimes lost. The
ground is so soggy, in fact, that wagons cannot be used.
There is not a four-wheeled vehicle in the whole country.
Carts can be used only in Port Stanley. All travel is on
horseback, and a stranger dare not go from one sheep farm
to another without a guide. Such hauling as is done by

132

IN THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

the shepherds is on sledges dragged over the wet but snow-
less ground by horses. All herding of sheep is done upon
horses and with dogs, which are raised and trained for the
purpose.

Notwithstanding all this, the Falklands are excellent for
the raising of both cattle and sheep. The latitude is,
roughly speaking, the equivalent in the southern hemi-
sphere of that of Holland in the northern hemisphere, and
the animals feed out all the year round. Before sheep
were introduced, the regions fairly swarmed with wild
cattle and wild horses; it is estimated that there were
once eight hundred thousand of these wild cattle. Now
these have all disappeared, though almost as many sheep
have taken their places.

The wild cattle occasioned the first settlement. In
1844, a rich cattle- and hide-dealer of Montevideo, named
Lafone, bought the right to the southern portion of East
Falkland, together with all the wild cattle on the islands,
for fifty thousand dollars down and the promise to pay
one hundred thousand additional in ten years from 1852.
In this deal he got over six hundred thousand acres of land,
besides the skins of the wild cattle. In 1852, he sold this
property to a company for one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, and since then this company has been the lead-
ing power in the Falklands. It has bought more land,
until it now owns above a million acres, with about
three hundred thousand sheep. Its boats periodically
make the round of the islands, carrying to the farmers
such goods as they order, and bringing their wool to
Stanley for shipment to Europe. The wool is put up in
bales just as we bale cotton. Much of it goes to the
markets by the regular steamers. The ship on which I

133

THE TAIL OFF THE HEMISPHERE

came took on twelve hundred bales of six hundred and
fifty pounds each.

It does not take many shepherds to care for the large
flocks. The farms are divided up into fields of several
thousand acres each and fenced with wire, so that all the
shepherd has to do is to ride about among the sheep and
take them out of the bogs when they fall in or turn them
over if they fall down. They have to be dipped to keep
off the scab, and at shearing time they are driven to the
wool shed and shorn. The wool is not washed, but is
carefully cut off, packed in bales, covered with bagging,
hooped with iron, and shipped thus to London for sale.

Most of the sheep are of the Cheviot and Australian
breeds. They have heavy fleeces, the average being from
eight to ten pounds. Sometimes they run as high as
twenty-one pounds, the actual weight of a fleece recently
sheared.

The life of the shepherds on the Falklands is a lonely
one. Like the shepherds of Tierra del Fuego they are
Scotchmen. Most of them are married and have large
families. Their houses are scattered over the farms from
fifteen to twenty miles apart; they are usually built near
peat beds and near little inlets, where the company’s
boat can bring supplies. Besides his wages the shep-
herd gets allowances of meat. The meat, of course, is
mutton. His fuel is peat, which while it costs nothing, he
must dig for himself. In addition to this, he has a
garden patch, and with mutton and vegetables he does
very well. Flour and other staples he must buy. His
home is usually a little cottage of two rooms and a lean-
to roofed with corrugated iron. One room serves as a
kitchen and living room, and in the other the family sleep.

134

Smartly uniformed and well set up, the Argentine customs guards on
the Transandine line give at once a favourable and a correct impression of

the country and people soon to be visited.

Because of high freight rates by rail, the old trails across the Andes are
still used. The herds of cattle driven over the passes between Chile and
Argentina must have their front hoofs shod so as not to wear them out on
the down grade.

IN THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

If there is an overflow, or a guest arrives, the loft, or attic,
is also used as a bedroom. ‘The cooking is done in a curi-
ous, oven-like pot, which is shelved over a grate set in the
stone wall of achimney or fireplace. The hot ashes from
the burning peat fall down upon the pot and around it.
The pot, which is tightly closed at the top, serves alike for
boiling, baking, and stewing. The shepherd has mutton
as a steady diet; he has mutton chops for breakfast, roast
mutton for dinner, and a slice of cold mutton for lunch or
supper.

The herders seldom leave their farms and the women
often remain upon them for years at a time. I heard of
one woman who had not been to town for eighteen years.
Her last visit was when she came to Port Stanley to be
‘married. Think of living away out on the dreariest
moorland, under the dreariest sky, in a two-roomed cot-
tage, with no neighbour within fifteen miles, and coming
into town only once in eighteen years!

One would think that the children brought up under
such circumstances would be wild and uneducated. They
are not. They are as intelligent and well-mannered chil-
dren as you will find in any country community. There
is a peculiar institution in the Falklands known as the
travelling schoolmaster. He is paid by the government,
receiving about four hundred dollars a year, to go from
one shepherd’s house to another and teach the children.
The time allotted to each family is a fortnight, and if three
families can bring their children together they thus get
six weeks of schooling. The schoolmaster lives two weeks
with each family, at the end of which, having laid out
a plan of home study for the children, he is sent on horse-
back by the shepherd to the next family, which may be

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THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

twenty miles away. In the course of time he gets back
to his old pupils, examines them in what they have gone
over with their parents and sisters, and then takes them
as much farther on the road to learning as his two weeks’
stay will permit.

The bishop and the parson of Port Stanley, who are
also paid by the government, make a tour of the island
once or twice a year to examine the children, not only in
their catechism, but in their secular studies. These
children are descended from the best stock of the high-
lands of Scotland. Their ancestors are among the thrif-
tiest people in the world; indeed, many of the shepherds
save money, and not a few have taken their savings to
Patagonia where they become sheep owners themselves.
There are no beggars in the Falkland Islands.

Let us take a look at Port Stanley, the capital. It has
but seven hundred inhabitants, including the governor
and his officials; but it has more business than many towns
five times its size. It is perhaps, in its way, the richest
capital city in the world, for every one of its inhabitants
has all he can eat, and to spare. Port Stanley is situated
on Stanley Harbour, just beyond Cape Pembroke, at the
eastern end of East Falkland. Its roadstead is a safe,
landlocked bay, about half a mile wide and five miles
long, with an entrance so narrow that a large vessel
could hardly turn about in it.

On the south side of the harbour, climbing a gently
sloping hill, are a hundred or so neat one- and two-story
cottages of wood or stone, with ridge roofs of corrugated
iron. Viewed from the steamer, Port Stanley resembles
a German village, and a closer look shows that every
little house has its front yard and garden, and that the

130

IN THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

front doors of even the poorest of the cottages have vesti-
bules. These are to shield the visitors and the families
from the cold wind. In nearly every window are potted
plants and flowers, for they can not grow out of doors,
and I venture to say that there is not a town of its size
in the world that has so many greenhouses and conserva-
tories.

There is a plant on the islands called the tea plant whose

leaves are used for brewing a home drink; it has berries of
a rose-red colour. Celery grows wild. Penguin eggs as
big as goose eggs are plentiful in season. They are deli-
cious eating and cheap. Penguins themselves are such a
drug on the market that they sometimes sell for a dollar
and a half per hundred.
"Beside each house is the peat pile. The black cubes
come from the bog on the top of the hill, at the foot of
which lies Port Stanley. Everyone here can get his fuel for
the digging, and nearly every householder in Port Stanley
goes to the moor and chops out his peat blocks for the
winter.

Some of the houses are quite pretentious. The manager
of the Falkland Island Company has a house containing
a dozen rooms, and the cottages of the governor cover
perhaps a quarter of an acre, all of the rooms being on one
floor. There are three churches, one of which is called
the Cathedral. This is presided over by the bishop of
the Falklands. Another church is the Roman Catholic,
and a third is that of the Baptist denomination. There
are two hotels, or public houses, where one can get a bed
or a drink.

Port Stanley has a post office, at which the monthly
newspaper mail averages five pounds per family. It has

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THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

a postal savings bank, ‘and though there are only three
thousand people in the Falklands, yet the depositors in
this bank number eight hundred. The colony has a
governor appointed by the Crown, who gets a salary of
seventy-five hundred dollars a year.

138

CHAPTER XIX
OVER THE ANDES BY RAIL

CROSS the Andes by railway!
Climbing by rack and pinion over the highest
range of our hemisphere!
Shooting through the darkness of the two-
mile tunnel from Chile into Argentina!

Ascending almost straight up from the Pacific Ocean
to peaks lost in the clouds, and coasting from the snows
down into the broad lands that extend to the Atlantic.

This is the story of my trip over the transcontinental
railroad that ties the coasts together. It is less than
twenty-eight days by steamer direct from New York to
Buenos Aires, but we can go from New York to Valparaiso
in about twenty and be in Buenos Aires in, twenty-two
days if we choose the Transandine route.

The time across the continent can be greatly reduced.
The continuous trip now takes about thirty-eight hours,
whereas we travel from New York to Chicago in less than
twenty hours. The chief delay here is in crossing the
mountains, but the journey from port to port will some
day be made in thirty hours, or by express trains of the
future, within one day.

I left Santiago at about six o’clock in the evening and
four hours later had passed out of the great central valley
of Chile and climbed to the station of Los Andes, where
the narrow-gauge track begins. Los Andes is a tiny rail-

139

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

road town consisting of little more than a hotel, but the
hotel affords some unexpected comforts. It has several
hundred large rooms, each of which has hot and cold water,
an uncommon thing in this part of the world. The rates
are two dollars and twenty cents for lodging, including
coffee and bread in the morning. And the coffee is good.

We left Los Andes about eight o’clock next morning
and wound our way through a narrow valley walled by
steep, rocky mountains. The journey was a steady
climb with an average grade of three per cent. and when
the rack-and-pinion sections were reached, a maximum
grade of eight per cent.

The road goes up the valley of the Aconcagua River,
which rises in Mount Aconcagua. The stream is the
colour of putty, and reminded me of the glacial streams
of the Alps. It is fed by the glaciers of Aconcagua and
is loaded with the earth-washings of the Andes. In
places where the valley widens there are irrigated patches
with little fields of alfalfa, barley, and beans. Now and
then we passed a straw-thatched mud hut. Wherever
there was room a handful of such huts formed a village.
The people generally live by tilling the small patches of
land near their homes. Some of the fields are not bigger
than city lots, nevertheless, there are often horses and
cattle feeding upon them, and on single farms I saw crops
of.corn and barley besides the pastures.

I saw a grain field where the farmers were preparing for
threshing. They had spread the sheaves of wheat inside
a ring of hard ground and near by stood a half-dozen
horses waiting to be driven over the straw to tread out
the grain. A little farther on I saw another threshing
floor surrounded by posts and wire fencing. One cowboy

140

OVER ShHE ANDES BY RAIL

stood in the centre of the ring and two others at the
side, each witha long whip in hishand. They kept twenty
horses on a dead gallop round and round the ring. Aftera
time the horses were driven out and the straw and chaff
were thrown up against the wind to be blown away. The
grain fell to the ground and was scooped into bags for
the market. Then another carpet of sheaves was laid
on the threshing floor, and the process repeated. Some of
our manufacturers of harvesting machines have made
small threshers for use in the mountains, which are being
introduced in these highlands.

As we climbed up the Andes we could see the old trail,
still used for crossing the continent. We passed trains of
donkeys loaded with freight, pack mules taking merchan-
dise from one side of the range to the other, and drovers,
with cattle and horses, making their slow way over the
heights. The mountain road is longer than the railway
route, but freight rates are so high that the mule trains
still handle much of the traffic.

The highest point on the trail is twelve thousand six
hundred and five feet, or a little higher than the top of
Fujiyama, Japan. It goes over the Uspallata Pass two
thousand feet above the railroad tunnel, the altitude of
which is over ten thousand feet, or nearly two miles above
the level of the sea. The boundary line between Chile
and Argentina crosses the tunnel, so I went from one re-
public to the other in darkness.

The scenery on this route over the Andes is similar to
that of the Rockies along the Denver and Rio Grande
railroad. The rock formations are strange and varied
and at some points have as many colours as the Colorado
canyon. One goes through mighty gorges, or passes

141

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

under rocks hanging mountain-high overhead, and sud-
denly comes out upon beautiful lakes sparkling like pol-
ished silver in the clear mountain air.

There is little vegetation on the Pacific side of the slope.
The chief plants are the cacti peculiar to this region.
Among them is the giant cactus brandishing its spines
from ten to twelve feet in length. These plants resemble
somewhat the organ cactus of Mexico and Arizona. On
many of them | saw what I thought were their bright red
blossoms, but I found they were flowering parasites,
common to the highlands of this part of the world.

A little farther up the mountains the cacti disappeared.
The earth showed that it had some moisture and we saw
low bushes bearing yellow and blue flowers. Higher
still it was again dry, the bushes vanished, and we came
into canyons and hills of volcanic rock, changing colour
with the sun and the shade. On one side of the canyon
the rocks were bright yellow, on the other they were gray,
turning to opal tints in the shadows.

At Rio Blanco, on the Chilean side, we reached the cog
railroad and went on by a series of jerks, a jerk for each
cog in the track. The steepest part of the road over the
mountains is a narrow-gauge line one hundred and eleven
miles long, with twenty-five miles of cog system. The
rails weigh about fifty pounds to the yard and the ties
are of quebracho, from a tree native to lower South
America, the wood of which is one of the hardest and
toughest known. The powerful engines, made by Kitson
and Company, of Leeds, England, were built especially
for climbing the mountains. The locomotives are double,
with a rack-and-pinion device at the front.

All the Transandine trains have first- and second-class

142

The Andean boundary between Chile and Argentina is crossed through
a two-mile tunnel, ten thousand feet above the sea, the entrances to which,
during our mid-summer, are frequently blocked by snow.

The river-built land of the Mendoza valley is so well suited to grapes
that it is practically all one vast vineyard, producing something like
seventy-five million gallons of wine every year.

OVER@IEP ANDES BY RAIL

cars. My fellow-passengers of the first class were chiefly
business men and clerks. Nearly every one wore a
duster, but this was to avoid the dirt of the lowlands rather
than that of the mountains. A large part of the Argentine
pampas is covered with sand, and the trip across them is
one of the dustiest in the world. In the second-class
cars were chiefly Chilean peasants.

I saw constant evidence of the enormous cost of the
construction and maintenance of the Transandine Rail-
way. We passed many gangs repairing the road-bed,
and everywhere the track has to be watched for dirt
slides such as have caused so much trouble at Panama.
In winter there is also danger from avalanches, although
the higher sections are protected by snow sheds. In some
years as much as fifty thousand dollars has been spent for
snow protection. Chile and Argentina jointly furnish
the labourers, each for its own part of the lines. The
high officials of the road and the engineers are English-
men. The conductors are natives.

Our first station in the Argentine Republic was Las
Cuevas, at the eastern end of the tunnel, and the first
official | met was a guard of the Argentine frontier. The
next was the customs officer who came into the cars to
examine our baggage. He was lenient and gave us no
trouble whatever.

The scenery of the Argentine Andes is less rugged than
that on the Chilean side. The way at first is through a
desert and the tops of the mountains are rocky and barren.
Soon after leaving Las Cuevas, I caught sight of Mt.
Aconcagua about fifteen miles away, Its peak is an ir-
regular mass of snow, with jagged black rock reaching
from the snow line down to the rocky valley. The sum-

143

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

mit is almost twenty-three thousand feet above the sea,
the highest peak of the New World. Some distance to the
southward in plain sight is Mt. Tupangato, twenty-two
thousand feet high, far higher than any mountain on our
continent.

All the way down the Andes we were in sight of mag-
nificent peaks. We passed the famous Inca Bridge, a
natural bridge of limestone, and crossed the narrow pass
of Uspallata. On the Chilean side we had followed
the valley of the swift-flowing Aconcagua River. On
the Argentine side we descended toward the Atlantic
along another glacial stream that raged and foamed
over the rocks. This river, the Mendoza, waters the
fruit-growing oasis in the desert at the foot of the Ar-
gentine Andes. It carries down great masses of silt
which feed tens of millions of grape-vines and count-
less fruit trees and gardens. It is the mother of the
city of Mendoza, having built up about that town some
of the most valuable soil in the world.

William Wheelwright planned a railway to cross the
mountains from Caldera on the Pacific to Rosario on the
Rio de la Plata, several hundred miles from its mouth,
but it never reached the mountains. The present road
originated with two brothers, Juan and Mateo Clark.
They began building on both the Chilean and Argentine
sides about 1889. The work went slowly until about
1899, when construction stopped. The track had been
laid as far as the beginning of the tunnel on each side of the
Andes. The engineers seemed afraid of the tunnel and
money could not be raised to continue the work until
W. R. Grace and Company of New York took the contract
and began to bore in from both sides of the mountain.

144

OVER THE ANDES BY RAIL

Late in 1910 the two gangs of workmen came together.
The engineers had planned so accurately that for some
time the workmen in Chile could hear the workmen in
Argentina digging at the thin veil of rock that was left.
Then a final charge of dynamite was set off, the two
tunnels were joined, and the mountains were conquered.

The tunnel is practically two miles long and all the
way lies through rock. At the very top of the pass,
two thousand feet above the tunnel, stands the famous
“Christ of the Andes.’”’ One of the beautiful statues of
the world, there is none that compares with it in the
nobility of the sentiment it stands for. ‘The Christ
of the Andes” is a greater monument of civilization than
the famous Peace Palace at The Hague, or that other
Peace Palace erected by Mr. Carnegie in Costa Rica
and thrown down by an earthquake.

The statue is a bronze figure of the Christ cast from old
Argentine cannon. It was placed on the boundary be-
tween Chile and Argentina to commemorate the treaty
made between the two republics in 1903. It marks the
settlement of a dispute that involved a territory as large
as our state of Kansas, or more than one-third as large as
either Germany or France. The figure is twenty-six feet
high and stands on a granite pedestal. One hand of the
Christ is outstretched in blessing and the other upholds
the cross. On the pedestal are engraved in Spanish
these words:

Sooner shall these mountains crumble into dust than the people of
Argentina and Chile break the peace which they have sworn to main-
tain at the feet of Christ, the Redeemer.

Many Europeans, and Americans, too, are inclined to
(45

THE TAIL ‘OF THE HEMISPHERE

regard the countries of lower South America as a part of
the backwoods of the world, and are prone to sneer at their
lack of culture and morals. After the horrors of the World
War, when organized murder became a national virtue and
written obligations between governments merely scraps
of paper, it revives one’s faith to recall ‘“The Christ of
the Andes.”

146

Coming down from the height of the Andes on the Argentine side, the
railroad follows the silt-laden Mendoza River, which, like the Nile, brings
food and drink to the lands that it irrigates.

Besides her vast expanses of good lands, Argentina has an equable cli-
mate permitting cattle to feed out of doors the year round, which makes
for lower costs in her production of beef for the world’s markets.

CHAPTER XX
A VINEYARD OASIS

HE city of Mendoza is an oasis of vineyards in the
heart of a desert. Lying here at the foot of the
lofty Andes Mountains,on the railway that crosses
the continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic, it
is the centre of the great valley of the Mendoza River.

The river is not beautiful, although here and there
willow trees line its course. It narrows and widens,
passing in and out among mighty boulders, always carry-
ing the silt that is like so much gold dust to the Mendoza
fruit grower. The water is the colour of chocolate and as
thick as pea soup. It is so loaded with silt that wherever
it meets an obstruction it builds up a sand-bar or an island,
and if one can find a patch of stones over which the current
can be turned, he can soon have a covering of the richest
soil. There are many such islands in the river and they
frequently change the course of the stream.

The eastern foothills of the Andes have so little rain
that most of the land is a desert. For this reason, all of
the available water of the Mendoza is used for irrigation.
There are frequent dams to divert the stream over the
fields, while now and then there are canals with many
laterals. The water gives life to all the land that it
touches. It regenerates the valley year after year, as
the Nile does Egypt, permitting enormous crops to be
produced without nitrates or phosphates.

147

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

The river-built land is so well suited to grapes that the
whole valley has been turned into vineyards. Farther
back in the country are hundreds of thousands of acres
devoted to grazing; but here every square yard is in grapes,
producing something like seventy-five million gallons of
wine every year. As vineyards in bearing are worth three
thousand gold dollars and upward an acre, the bare lands
with the water rights will bring as much as one thousand
dollars per acre.

I saw one little vineyard of seventy acres that nets
eight thousand dollars a year. The owner told me the
average vineyard pays all expenses and gives fifteen per
cent. of clear profit year in and year out. When the sea-
son is good and grapes are high it yields more, but when the
bad seasons come the profits are still sufficient to make
the average fifteen per cent.

Vast quantities of grapes are turned into wine. The
town-dwelling Argentineans are a wine-drinking people,
though the country people drink more mateé, which is
much like tea. The natives of Spanish descent habitually
take wine with their meals. The immigrants, who have
come in by the millions and form perhaps one half of the
population, are mainly Italians and Spaniards, and they
also drink wine every day. All the small Italian farmers
have their own wine supply and everyone who can afford
it lays in a stock for his use each season.
~ Most of these farmers buy upon credit, as is the custom
in our Southern states, paying their bills when the crops
are sold. If the yield promises to be good they have
little difficulty in getting all the food, seeds, and farm
implements they want. But for one thing the merchants
will not give credit. That is wine. The wine is bought

148

A VINEYARD OASIS

and sold only for cash, even at retail. Whenever times
are hard in the cities the wine sales fall off and the price
of grapes in the vineyard provinces drops, sometimes to one
cent a pound.

And just here I would say that this little valley promises
to become, like the central valley of Chile, another
winter fruit garden for our North American cities. Men-
doza is already sending grapes to the Atlantic seaboard
and thence to New York. The fruit goes in refrigerator
cars and steamers. It is carried from here to Buenos
Aires, a distance as far as from New York to Detroit, or it
might be shipped over the mountains to Valparaiso,
and thence go north in the fast ships through the Panama
Canal.

The grapes here are equal to the finest from Spain or
California. They can be landed in perfect condition
and delivered in the chief cities of the United States in
the very heart of our winter, for while blizzards are raging
among the skyscrapers of New York the orchards of
Mendoza are loaded with fruit.

But let me give some idea of this wonderful valley of
which I am writing. In Mendoza I am in the centre of a
million acres of vineyards. The vines grow close to the
city and enormous vineyards are separated from its
buildings only by mud walls four or five feet in height.
We can take a belt line and ride around the town, going
all the way through vineyards and nothing but vineyards.
This morning I spent two hours riding through this enor-
mous fruit garden. The grapevines lining both sides
of the track are set out in orderly rows sometimes half
a mile long, with black earth and irrigation ditches be-
tween the rows. The vines are cut back every year, as

149

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

in France, and their tops are only waist-high from the
ground. They are trained upon wires tacked to rough
posts and the grapes hang down in great clusters. I saw
vineyards of a thousand acres entirely filled with white
grapes, and other tracts equally large where all the grapes
were blue or purple. They are quite as big as damson
plums, single bunches weighing four or five pounds.

The trimming of these vineyards is so carefully done
that the whole area looks like an ornamental garden, and
the ground is so thoroughly cultivated that not a weed is
tobeseen. The labourers are mainly Chileans and Argen-
tineans, although many Italians and Spaniards come in to
help harvest the crop. The wine grapes are left on the
vines until they are dead ripe, when they are at their
sweetest and just ready to be turned into wine.

I saw many of the large bodegas, or wine-making estab-
lishments. Nearly all of them have their own vineyards,
but they also buy grapes of the growers near them. Some
of the bodegas are of vast extent, with buildings that cover
acres; others are small. The presses of Mendoza prov-
ince alone make about three hundred million quarts of
wine a year, and the adjoining province of San Juan pro-
duces about one fifth as much. These two provinces
spell “Wine” to every Argentinean, and one of the common
sayings describes a person manifestly under the influence of
alcohol as entre San Juan y Mendoza, (between San Juan
and Mendoza). The capital invested in vineyards and
bodegas runs high into the millions of dollars, and is
spread over an area of more than a quarter of a million
acres of land.

I have just visited a bodega said to be the largest wine
press of the world. In its cellars are forty-one com-

150

Windmills from the United States have become a conspicuous feature of
the sky-line in the Pampas, which extend for miles and miles as level as the
sea, with only occasional signs of human habitation.

The Argentine “‘troje,” or corn crib, is made of corn stalks so woven
around a framework of poles as to protect the grain stored inside. Argen-
tina is the world’s chief corn exporter.

A VINEYARD OASIS

partments for storing and aging wine. In its fermenting
rooms there are twenty vats, each holding one hundred
thousand gallons, and smaller vats with a total capacity
of more than a million. In addition to the four to five
hundred vats, there are even more tanks, the whole form-
ing reservoirs that could hold more than two million
gallons at one time. This bodega has one hundred and
eighty-two cars for bringing the grapes from the vineyards
to the winery and ninety-three tank cars of twenty-five
hundred gallons each to transport the wine and the grape
juice from other bodegas. The capital of this institution
is three million dollars, on which it is said to pay dividends
of twelve per cent. besides laying away a big surplus.

The grapes come in by the carload and first pass through
crushing machines. The pulp is then run through four-
inch pipes to the fermenting vats and the juice goes
through cellar after cellar and from vat to vat in its fer-
mentation. It is stored in tuns as tall as a three-story
house and also in tanks, each big enough to form a swim-
ming pool for an elephant. The staves are several inches
thick and bound with heavy hoops of steel. The tanks
were all made in France.

Everything is of the most modern make. The machin-
ery is operated by electricity and the barrels in which the
wine is shipped are manufactured on the premises. As I
went out I passed a tank mounted on a motor truck, used
for carrying wine from the farm to the press. This tank
on wheels held one thousand gallons.

The Mendoza River has created a forest in the midst of
its garden of vineyards. The trees grow in the heart of
the city itself. Water runs through all the streets of
Mendoza, each of which is lined with poplars and other

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THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

shade trees. The city has five large plazas filled with
palms and tropical vegetation. In the heart of the town is
the Plaza of San Martin. This park consists of sunken gar-
dens, triangular in shape, with raised walks running around
and through them, on which the people take their eve-
ning promenade. But the citizens’ chief pride is in West-
Park which covers fifteen hundred acres on a shelf of land a
little higher than that on which the city stands. It con-
tains a sheet of water almost a mile long, where regattas
are held. Electric-lighted avenues are lined with magnifi-
cent trees and at frequent intervals are gardens of shrubs
and plants. It has also a botanical garden and a Zo-
ological exhibit.

From the hills two miles away there looks down over
the park and the city the “Army of the Andes,” one of
the world’s most imposing memorials. This is the colos-
sal heroic group carved from the granite of the mountain
top to commemorate one of the great feats of military
history, the passage of the Andes by the army of San
Martin during the wars for South American independence.
The four thousand men he had been drilling for five years
in Mendoza were divided into two detachments. One of
these went by the Uspallata Pass, over the Cumbre,
twelve thousand eight hundred feet above the sea, and
the other took the much longer and colder though not
so lofty route over the pass of Los Putos north of Acon-
cagua. The daring manceuvre succeeded with the loss of
only a few men, and resulted in a brilliant victory that
broke the power of Spain in Chile and Peru.

I am delighted with Mendoza. It is one of. the prettiest
of South American cities and one of the newest and freshest
in appearance, despite the fact that it is one of the oldest

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A VINEYARD OASIS

cities of the continent. It was founded seventy-five
years before Boston, and was a thriving municipality
when New York was born. It was over three hundred
years old when an earthquake destroyed it in 1861. The
convulsion occurred while a large number of people were
in the churches, and more than ten thousand were buried
in the ruins of the falling buildings. This reduced the
population to eight thousand, but Mendoza rapidly grew
upon its ruins and now it has sixty-five or seventy thousand
inhabitants.

The present-day city is made largely of materials
taken from the ruins. On account of the earthquakes,
the buildings are nearly all of one story, but they are large
and their exteriors are decorated. Mendoza is noted for
its colleges and normal schools. It has also a model
kindergarten which stands in beautiful gardens with the
Andes for a panoramic background.

The city is lighted by electricity and has electric cars.
There are fine stores in the chief business section, but
the smaller establishments make one think of the shops
of southern Europe. Many of them are open at the
front, the walls being used as show cases. The outside
of one hat store is covered with hats, and a great tin hat,
with an incandescent light globe hanging from the bottom
of it, forms the sign over the front door. Many of the
hat shops are not more than five or six feet wide. Some
of the stores have realistic picture signs. A barber shop
has over the door a painting of a barber at work, while a
toy store has a picture of children buying doll babies,
Noah’s arks, and miniature automobiles.

Following a visitor’s invariable custom, I went to the
market. It was filled with vegetables and fruits. I saw

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THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

onions five inches in diameter, green peas as big as marbles,
tomatoes the size of a pint cup, also roasting ears and lima
beans. I found plums and apples, and figs, both blue
and white. I saw grapes in bunches as big as my head
and watermelons and muskmelons. Among the musk-
melons is one like our casaba with a white pulp that is
especially delicious, which weighs twenty or thirty pounds.
As this melon is said to keep well, it may some day be
among the fruits exported for our winter use. Another
delicious fruit is the nectarine, with a skin as smooth as
that of a plum but like a peach in its pulp and flavour.

154

GHARTERLXX]
ACROSS THE PAMPAS

ROM Mendoza, in the foothills of the Andes,
to Buenos Aires on the east coast, I travelled
for a day and a night over the pampas. My
train, a fast express, carried me into the most

thickly settled part of this mighty country.

Passing first through a region of vineyards, with grape-
vines extending on each side of the track as far as the
eye could reach, we soon came to the edge of the desert,
as indicated by the scrubby brush. Beyond the desert,
which it took several hours to cross, we looked out upon
vast plains covered with alfalfa knee-high. Herds of fat
cattle were feeding init. Bales of it, covered with canvas
to keep off the rain, were piled high at the railroad stations.

The western part of the Argentine Republic is thinly
settled, with villages far apart. The people we saw at
the stations were like those of our western frontier.
Many of them looked as though they had just come from
the immigrant ships. I saw Spaniards and Italians by the
score, and mixed with them gauchos, or Argentine cowboys.
The men wore cotton caps and jackets and full trousers
held up by belts or strings at the waist with the’ legs
tied in at the ankles. Some of the men of the better
class had on leggings or boots. The women wore bright-
coloured calico dresses, with skirts that reached only to
the tops of their shoes. Their heads were bare or covered

155

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

with shawls. They reminded me of the peasants of
southeastern Europe.

Between stations we saw little but vast fields fenced with
wire and spotted with large droves of stock. We often
rode for miles without seeing any dwellings of the great
landowners. Most of the farmhouses are low mud huts
not more than twenty feet square. Some of the huts are
roofed with galvanized iron and others with thatch.
Among the newer homes many are of galvanized iron,
not as good as the ordinary “tin” garage of our country.
In most cases two or three rooms make up the whole
house. None of the poorer huts have gardens. They
are the homes of the Italian colonists who have come
here to make money, and though some of them own large
tracts of land, they live little better than hogs.

Passing out of the alfalfa country, we entered a region
of pastures interspersed with fields of Indian corn. Some
of the fields seemed almost boundless, the green reaching
out like a mighty sea from each side of the track.

As I rode across the republic, I was impressed with
its immensity. Often I could see nothing but the sky
and the grass and the crops extending to the horizon.
The sky hangs low. It is of a hot blue, with a few silvery,
floating clouds. The fields stretch into hundreds of
acres, and the rows of corn seem to merge with the sky.
The corn is as luxuriant as that of Illinois or Missouri,
and yields so lavishly that Argentina exports more corn
than any other land in the world.

And then the great pasture lands. There are thousands
of acres of pasture to every acre of corn. The grass goes
on and on in all directions. At times I rode for an hour,
seeing nothing but grass, grass, with vast flocks and herds

156

ACROSS THE PAMPAS

feeding upon it, and now and then some huts of the farmers
or perhaps, on the skyline, the skeleton tower of a wind-
mill of galvanized iron. Windmills are universal. They
are needed to provide for watering the stock, and some-
times they are so numerous that you can see the curvature
of the earth from the graduated heights of the mills
rising over the land. They have a saucy look as they
stand out so prominently on the pampas, making one
think of a little girl’s head, the wheel forming the face
and the rudder the little tail of tightly braided hair
sticking out behind. Many of these windmills are of
American makes. Indeed, | am told that American
agricultural machinery is supreme in Argentine markets.
After riding for hours through these pastures we entered
a region of wheat and corn. The immensity was just
as impressive. I saw many American threshers at work.
They stood beside stacks often several hundred feet long
which looked like mighty yellow windrows. The grain
is bagged as it comes from the threshing machine. On the
roads I saw long teams of oxen bringing the fat bags to the
train. At some of the stations were warehouses of gal-
vanized iron for storing the grain and at others, canvas-
covered mountains of bags standing near the tracks.
As we entered eastern Argentina the signs of careful
cultivation increased. There were many fine buildings,
the homes of the rich estancieros, but the homes of the
common people were just as mean and squalid as those
farther west. Some of the landed estates are enormous
and many contain tens of thousands of acres. One
of the most noted is La Pastoral, which covers thirty-
seven thousand acres. Fifteen thousand head of Dur-
hams and Herefords feed upon it. Another farm has

157

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

seventy-five thousand acres, with twenty-five thousand
head of stock, and the San Jacinta farm includes within
its fences sixty thousand acres, of which only seven hun-
dred are devoted to grain. The rest is in pasture.

Argentina, the richest and most enterprising of the
South American republics, is fast taking its place among
the great powers of the world. Besides its average good
lands, it has some of the finest soils upon earth. It has
long been feeding John Bull and is now reaching up along
our side of the Atlantic to feed Uncle Sam. The Britisher
has Argentine steaks and chops every morning, while
already steamers leave Buenos Aires loaded with beef
and mutton for the tables of New York. The country
is sending butter abroad and may soon be adding to our
supplies of flour and Indian corn.

Indeed, the food lands of the Argentine are enormous
almost beyond conception, rivalling our own in agricul-
tural production. Argentina is much smaller than the
United States, but it has fewer waste lands and better
climatic conditions. Cattle and horses can feed out of
doors all the year round, while the sumimers are hot
enough to raise corn. Corn and hogs form the greatest
possibilities of the future. Though the grain lands are
annually producing exports to the value of more than a
quarter of a billion dollars, they are only at the beginning
of their development.

158

The Jockey Club of Buenos Aires is the richest association of its kind in
the world and in the private concourse at its track are seen the elect of the

Republic.

The Chaco is a wilderness of swamps, plains, and forests, in the northern
tropical frontier land of Argentina. Here is obtained the quebracho wood
exported to the United States for its tannin.

CHAPTER XXII
ARGENTINA AND THE UNITED STATES COMPARED

E HAVE often seen Argentina on the

map, but maps are lifeless things and

it takes a geographer to show just what

they mean. Let us see if we cannot make
this country more real by comparing it with ours.

In the first place, Argentina is about one third as large
as the United States, but it has no great mountain chains
to eat up its good lands, and its desert area is small in
comparison with ours. If you could cut the Argentine
into patchwork and fit the pieces upon our territory, they
would cover every inch of land east of the Mississippi
and the remainder would be larger than a number of the
states west of that river. Argentina is twelve times as big
as Great Britain and five times as large as either Germany
or France. It is greater than Mississippi, Louisiana,
Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, Colorado,
and Kansas combined. It would make twenty states as
big as Illinois and the greater part of them would be
equally as rich.

Argentina and the United States both lie in the Tem-
perate Zone, although one is far north and the other far
south of the Equator. At noon in America one’s shadow
falls toward the north; here it falls toward the south.
Our cold lands are in the far north; the cold lands of
Argentina are in the far south. We go to Florida and the

ep!)

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

West Indies in January to warm our chilled bones; for
the same reason the Argentinean goes to Paraguay and
Brazil in July. In Buenos Aires, January is midsummer
and August midwinter. In the United States you must
have a southern exposure to get the sun during the cold
weather; in the Argentine Republic you want windows
facing the north.

Beth Argentina and the United States are agricultural
empires with their chief crops about the same. Each
has some of the best bread lands of the globe; both raise
millions of live stock. These two countries produce
enormous quantities of grain; both export food to the
rest of the world. They are already competitors in the
selling of meat, wheat, flour, and wool.

We, however, have been growing so fast that we are
turning from farming to manufacturing. As most of our
good land is already under cultivation, in the future we
may have to look to Argentina to fill our bread baskets.
Argentina already stands sixth among the world’s wheat
producers. Its annual crop is well over one hundred
million bushels, but this comes from only one fifth of the
territory upon which wheat can be grown. If all its
wheat lands were in use, even with the present poor
methods of farming, it would yield from eight hundred
million to one billion bushels of wheat every year. Then
it could supply all the flour we use and have several hun-
dred million bushels to spare.

As I have said, Argentina is already the chief corn
exporting country of the world. It produces something
like two hundred million bushels a year and exports at
least eighty per cent. of it. Our corn is nearly all used at
home. The Argentine has hardly begun to develop its

160

ARGENTINA AND THE UNITED STATES

corn lands. The whole northern part of the republic will
raise maize and the pork industry could also be tremen-
dously increased. An expert in that business has given
the opinion that Argentina and Uruguay should become
the greatest pig producers of the world; but so long as
cereals continue profitable, Argentine farmers will take
no pains to develop a new industry.

In addition to wheat and corn, Argentina is exporting
oats. She also raises vast quantities of flax, for linseed;
in fact, she practically supplies the world with linseed.
She ranks second among the sheep countries of the world,
falling only a little behind Australia, is fourth in the num-
ber of her cattle, and has more horses in proportion to her
area than any other land upon earth. The horses bred
here are among the finest known.

The crops come from the central and northern parts of
the republic and are grown in the beds of rich soil built
up by the wonderful system of streams emptying into
the Rio de la Plata. In South America four great rivers
form the chief drainage system for much of the land south
of the Amazon valley. These are the Parana and Para-
guay, which cover a great part of Brazil, the Pilcomayo,
which drains the slopes of the Bolivian Andes, and the
Uruguay, which drains the state of that name and much of
southern Brazil. Each of these rivers is rich with silt,
and for ages has been carrying down the plant food from
the highlands. These streams drain a country larger
than the basin of the Mississippi, in fact, half as large
as the United States. It is this drainage that has made
fat the Argentine pampas.

The best lands lie along the rivers, but the soil is rich
all the way to the Andes and so free from rocks that there

101

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

are tracts over which one can travel for a hundred miles
without finding pebbles enough for a game of jackstones.

Many sections of Argentina have their counterpart in
the United States. In general, the basin of the Rio de la
Plata is like that of the Mississippi. One must, however,
cut out the great fields of maize in our corn belt and cover
the land with pastures and grain. He must take away
forty-nine farmhouses out of every fifty and tear down the
barns. He must replace our neat country homes with
mean huts of mud thatched with straw or sheds of gal-
vanized iron, and erect here and there groups of large low
buildings surrounded by flowers and trees, for the homes
of the rich. Add then sheep and cattle feeding on the
vast fields in flocks of thousands and one will have some
idea of the broad lands of the Argentine.

In the northern part of the republic the scenery changes.
There are more corn fields and great plantations of sugar
cane. This region is warmer, like Florida or other parts
of our far South. The province of Tucuman has soil
which produces a hundred bushels of corn to the acre and
yields all the sugar consumed in the Argentine Republic.
It has tropical trees and plants, and pastures devoted to
cattle and horses. Still farther north is a region called
the Chaco, which is covered with forests interspersed
with pastures. This is the tropic frontier of the Argen-
tine. Much of it is still unexplored and little of it has

-been developed.

To the south of the great pampas, which fill central
Argentina, lies what was long known as Patagonia, a
tableland much like northern Nebraska. This country
is semi-arid, with a great deal of sand. The streams cut
their way through the crumbling soil, and the plains are

162

~ ARGENTINA AND THE UNITED SALES

covered only with brush and a thin growth of grass. Still,
the vegetation is sufficient for sheep, and wherever water
can be provided for the land it produces like the irrigated
sections of our far West. All of the river valleys are
being settled and the government is encouraging coloniza-
tion, especially in the valleys of the Colorado and Negro
rivers.

With these pictures in mind, we can more readily,
perhaps, understand the reasons for much that we shall
see in the great capital city and elsewhere in Argentina.

103

CHAPTER XXIII
BUENOS AIRES

UENOS AIRES is Argentina much more com-

pletely than Paris is France. Paris is by no

means France industrially; but Buenos Aires is

not only the political, financial, social, and in-
tellectual capital of the Argentine, but also her commercial
and industrial capital. There is a saying that when
Buenos Aires takes snuff, all Argentina sneezes. Argen-
tineans, in fact, know only two places—Buenos Aires and
the Campo. Buenos Aires is the capital city; the Campo
is all outside of the capital.

The literal meaning of Buenos Aires is “good airs,”
yet in early days the death-rate of the town belied it.
Though inodern sanitation has changed all that, there was
a time when lockjaw was so prevalent that it was caught
merely by taking a breath of air. That picturesque cut-
throat, Mendoza, was the city’s sponsor, and named it
for his patron saint, the Virgin Maria de Buenos Aires.

The Virgin’s city is now growing faster than any city
cn the globe. In 1898 its population was eight hundred
thousand. It has now more than double this number
and is increasing at the rate of one hundred thousand a
year. Already Buenos Aires is neck and neck with Phila-
delphia. It will eventually surpass Chicago and become
second only to New York among the great cities of the
New World.

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BUENOS AIRES

It is wonderful how the town is increasing its area.
It has spread out till it covers twice that of Paris and three
times that of Berlin. The houses are low and cover much
ground. The city is fifteen miles wide and twenty-five
miles long. A motor trip around town is likely to eat up
as much gasoline as the ride from Washington to Balti-
more.

In the early days of the city’s existence everyone, even
the beggars, went about on horseback. Each beggar was
required to carry a placard tied to his saddle giving his
number. One traveller records that he counted eighty-five
such mounted and placarded beggars in one trip through
the streets. On my first visit the town swarmed with car-
riages. Now the chug, chug, of the motor cycle is heard
day and night, while the motor cars double in number
every two years. There are something like seven thousand
motor taxicabs, which charge about half the rates of New
York or Chicago. Many of the taxis are of French makes,
but more and more American cars are being used. They
go like the wind and seem to know no speed limit. They
all keep to the left instead of the right and appear to
fly around corners without regard to the traffic.

Buenos Aires has a good street-car system. Its surface
tracks, joined end to end, would reach as far as from Wash-
ington to New York, and its subways are the finest ever
constructed. Take, for instance, the tube railway under
the Avenida de Mayo from the Great Western station to
the capitol building. It makes the underground roads of
old London look like dungeon tunnels. The cars, wider
than those of New York, are walled on each side with
plate glass and artistically lighted. The stations have
walls of tiles with a different colour for each station. The

105

THE TAIL OF THE’ HEMISPHERE

advertisements are so framed that they give no offence
tothe eye. The fare is four and a half cents

The subways belong to a British corporation. They
were built by excavating the streets from above and shut-
ting off the traffic for two blocks at a time while the con-
crete construction was put in. The first subway cost
thirty million dollars. Since then others have been
built, including freight subways by which cargoes are
carried under the chief business sections to the docks.

The city cuts new streets just as, many years ago,
Alexander, the Czar of the Russians, laid out the trunk
line from Moscow to Petrograd. His civil engineers
showed him a snake track taking in allthe towns. Alexan-
der laid a ruler on the map and drew a straight line from
one city to the other. ‘‘There is the route for my road,”
said he. It is just so that Buenos Aires was rebuilt.
The old streets were widened, and the new ones cut right
through the heart of the costliest properties. The only
question was what was best for the city, the extra cost
being a mere matter of bonded indebtedness to be paid in
the future. Before opening a new street the city bought
property on both sides, so that the increased values made
some of the biggest improvements pay for themselves.
This was specially true on the Avenida de Mayo, the land
for which cost five million dollars, although the street is
not more than one mile long.

The plans were based on faith in a great future city.
The water works were designed for a city of five or six
millions and involved an expenditure close upon fifty
millions in gold. The plant covers more than fifty acres
and the water passes through seven filters before reaching
the houses.

166

For three hundred years Buenos Aires was a Spanish city and every
fine house had its patio and iron-barred windows. With its enormous
growth and the lavish scale of rebuilding it now is more like Paris or Berlin.

’

are considered

The subways of Buenos Aires, the “city of good airs,’
the finest ever constructed. They are owned by a British corporation and
include a system for transporting freight.

BUENOS AIRES

The main artery of the city is the Avenida de Mayo,
with the Plaza de Mayo at one end and the national
Capitol at the other. Besides the streets, the town has
ninety-seven plazas, promenades, and parks. Palermo
Park is one of the fine parks of the world and the auto-
mobile throng which goes through its principal roads
upon Sundays compares with that of the Prater on the
edge of Vienna. Many streets are paved with’ asphalt
or with wooden blocks laid in cement.

The Avenida de Mayo was nothing a few years ago.
It has now an almost even skyline of six-story palaces,
with bay windows running from pavement to roof. At
one end is the Plaza de Mayo, upon which face the house
of the president, the Stock Exchange, and the famous
cathedral. At the other end are the marble halls of the
congress, which have cost so much that the people have
dubbed them the “‘ Palace of Gold.”” The avenue is more
than one hundred feet wide. It is lined with trees, so that
one looks down between rows of green to the great build-
ings at each end. Along this street are magnificent hotels
and stores the peer of those of New York and Paris.
There is a great variety in architecture. Much of the
decoration is Grecian and the skill of the Italian craftsman
is shown in the carvings.

The designing of new buildings has been greatly en-
couraged by the municipality. All plans have to be sub-
mitted to the city authorities. Those accepted enter
a competitive class, the best plan of each year receiving
a gold medal. The successful architect is thereby put
at the head of his profession for the year to come. In
addition, the municipality places a bronze plaque on the
front of the prize building when erected, and exempts

167

THE TANTS ORAHESHENISPHERE

it from the construction taxes that all others must
pay.

The building regulations are strict. As no structure can
be higher than the width of the street upon which it stands,
the average business block is of five or six stories. The
even skylines of the new streets give a most pleasing effect.
These vast municipal expenditures have transformed
Buenos Aires. Instead of seeming Spanish it is now like
Berlin or Paris, and old landmarks have disappeared.

This is one of the oldest cities of the New World. It wes
begun two hundred years before there was a house on the
site of Boston, and only forty-three years after Columbus
discovered America. The first buildings were mud huts
thatched with straw. Then a brick kiln was made and
later tiles and bricks were imported from Spain. The early
town was of Spanish architecture, which style prevailed
for more than three hundred years. The buildings were
chiefly of one story, built close to the sidewalk and around
patios and courts. Behind their iron-barred windows,
facing the streets, the sefioritas sat and watched their
lovers playing the “‘bear act,” or, as it is sometimes called,
“eating iron.” The girls could admire their suitors and
make eyes at them, but the bars were always between.

Now the patios are fast disappearing, plate glass win-
dows have driven out the iron bars, and the sefiorita has
become an up-to-date, twentieth-century maiden. Never-
theless, four fifths of the homes are still of one story,
although there are streets lined with six-story palaces, and
skyscrapers are going up facing some of the parks.
Many people now live in apartments, while there are an
increasing number of buildings with shops on the ground
floor and apartments above.

168

BUENOS AIRES

The old city was crowded together without breathing
spaces. The new has as large lungs as any municipality
in Europe and everything has been done to add to its
healthfulness. As a result the death rate has decreased.

Ninety-five per cent. of the factories of the country are
in Buenos Aires, and the large volume of foreign trade
passes through it. Its wholesale houses supply the entire
republic. One of the great sights is the harbour, where
there is more shipping business than at any place on our
hemisphere outside New York. About fifty thousand
vessels enter and leave Buenos Aires each year. There
are more than thirty thousand coasting boats.

The city lies about two hundred miles from the open
Atlantic, on the right bank of the Rio de la Plata, which
is here over thirty miles wide. The great mass of silt
brought down to the ocean by this river has required the
building of docks and the deepening of the channel at a
cost of many millions of dollars. A generation ago there
was a great mud bar before Buenos Aires and the anchor-
age was almost twelve miles away. All goods had to be
transferred to lighters or barges. Since then a channel
has been excavated, great dock basins have been built
at enormous expense, and ships can anchor almost in the
heart of the metropolis.

The port has the finest cargo-handling facilities. There
are single grain elevators with a capacity of a million
bushels each, and granaries which will hold twice that
much in sacks. There are huge flour mills, one of which
cost three and a half million dollars. Along the Riachuelo
River are the mammoth meat-packing plants, where
thousands of cattle and sheep are frozen each day and ship-
ped to the world’s markets. The harbour machinery is

169

THES TAI OF MT HE HENISPOERE

operated by electricity and electric lights enable the work
to go on all night.

The lighting system is excellent. For years the city
relied upon street lamps burning mare’s grease. The chief
avenues have now great Brush lights, artistically hung,
and in places the posts are set along the centre of the
streets to form islands of safety from the fast-flying auto-
mobiles. Most of the electricity is furnished by a com-
pany that pays dividends of twenty-five per cent. a year.

It costs something to run Buenos Aires. The annual
municipal budget totals twenty-five million dollars and
more, notwithstanding the fact that the national govern-
ment pays for the police, fire brigade, schools, water
supply, and drainage, as well as for the hospitals, work-
houses, and some other charitable institutions. The city
is governed by a council and mayor. It has a city hall,
facing the Plaza de Mayo, whose surroundings are just
about the same as those of the municipal buildings of
New York and Chicago. I found people of every class
hanging around, and saw no end of contractors and jobbers
and men with axes to grind. I don’t know about graft,
but I am told it prevails here to as great an extent as in
the worst of our American cities, some of the public
buildings having cost so much that they ought to be plated
with gold.

. The mayor is appointed by the president of the Argen-
tine Republic for a term of three years. The council
is elected by such taxpayers as pay one hundred dollars or
more per annum, while the only qualifications for a council-
man. is the payment of municipal taxes to the amount of
five hundred dollars per year. The twenty-two council-
men, each elected for a term of four years, receive no pay.

170

BUENOS AIRES

The council makes all the tax laws, and passes upon all
appropriations for city expense.

Taxes and license fees are heavier and more numerous
than those of the United States even during the war
period. Everything has to be stamped, and business docu-
ments must be written upon stamped paper. Every
business pays a license, that of the banks running all the
way up to thirty thousand dollars a year. Each profes-
sion pays a tax. Licenses of architects and surveyors cost
fifty dollars each, dentists pay fifty dollars per annum, and
photographers fifteen dollars and upward. Pawnbrokers
pay twenty-five hundred dollars or more, and all whole-
sale and retail business houses are assessed from seventy-
five to fifteen hundred dollars. There are also internal
revenue taxes, import and export taxes; in fact, taxes
upon everything and for everything under the sun.

171

CHAPTER XXIV
HIGH LIFE IN THE CAPITAL

KNOW all the great capitals of the world. I have

walked the boulevards of Paris and mingled with the

fashionable crowds along the Champs Elysées. 1

have made my way through Fleet Street to the Strand
and feasted my eyes on the windows of Bond Street and
Piccadilly. I have ridden in a jinrikisha through the
Ginsa in Tokio, have been jolted in a cart along the ruts
of the Tartar and Chinese parts of Pekin, and made my
way on a donkey through the Moski in Cairo. I have
shopped in Christian Street in Jerusalem, in the Street
Called Straight in Damascus, in the dimly lighted
avenues of Constantinople, and in the vaults of old
Tunis. I am acquainted with the Corso in Rome, the
Rialto of Venice, and Friedrichstrasse and Unter den
Linden in Berlin.

They are all full of interest, but each has its rival in
Florida Street in Buenos Aires. The Florida, as it is
called, is the chief promenade, the chief shopping and
gossiping place in this Paris of South America, and its
scenes between five and six in the afternoon are different
from those of any other great street of the world. At that
hour the thoroughfare is filled with a moving mass of
promenaders, made up of all classes and conditions of men.

While New York’s Fifth Avenue shops are displaying
the latest fall modes in furs and new creations in winter

172

High DiPEv ING THE’ CAPITAL

hats, Miss Argentina’s cheeks are rosy with the warmth
of spring sunshine and the shops of the Florida are showing
the latest confections in spring millinery and the smartest
designs in summer gowns. Miss Argentina arrives in the
shopping district in a luxurious automobile and, like
her northern sister, proceeds from store to store, her
chauffeur following his mistress as she progresses.

The fashions here, so American residents of Buenos
Aires declare, are just two seasons ahead of New York.
In the spring in Buenos Aires, they say, American women
can buy hats, gowns, and shoes which they will find, on
returning to the States six months later, just being dis-
played in the New York shops. Argentine women refuse
to be behind any one in dress, and the Parisian style dic-
tators, recognizing the opposition of the seasons, give
them a six months’ advantage.

The Florida is only thirty-five feet wide and less than
a mile long. It leads from the Plaza de Mayo, where are
the Government Palace, the Stock Exchange, and the
Cathedral, to the Plaza San Martin, where are the most
magnificent palaces, the Plaza Hotel, and the Jockey
Club. It is lined with fine buildings all the way and its
shops make one think of a mighty museum or a display ©
of the treasure vaults of the world.

The roadway is paved with asphalt; the sidewalks are
of tiles, like the floor of a bathroom. Everything is kept
as clean as a new pin and the crowd fits the surroundings.

The Argentineans are a well-dressed people. Everyone
spends as much on his clothes as his purse can afford,
Many of the men are clad in the extreme of style, and
young dancies stand on the sidewalks or stroll back and
forth.

Wig

JHE TAIL {OP THE HEMISPHERE

The women are of all classes; beautiful girls and sombre
old maidens move along arm in arm. There are crowds
of men. The young fellows are out to see the girls, and
the girls are out to be seen.

There are many blondes, although brunettes are in the
majority; and there are brunettes who would be blondes if
the white powder they dust so freely over their faces could
accomplish the feat.

Where are the carriages and automobiles? The Florida
has none at this hour. Between five and eight o’clock
the police shut off all wheeled traffic and the narrow street
is given up to the promenaders.

Many of the people are shopping, and the stores are
filled with customers. As I look at the signs I see that the
big houses of London and Paris have branches here. Some
of the shops are immense. Here is a jewellery store cover-
ing half an acre, and on the opposite side is a department
store that would be large in New York. There are shops
for women and shops for men, and great shops for children
and babies.

Stop and listen to the people as they go by! The
crowd is leisurely, and all have plenty of time. The
language is polyglot. It makes you think of Babel at the
time of the confusion of tongues, or of Pentecost, when
the Apostles preached to men of different languages from
all parts of the world. The bulk of this babel is Span-
ish, but mixed with it are Italian, French, German, and
English.

In the throng are faces from every country of Europe.
The mere number of people is enormous. The crowd is
always on the move, and it goes on and on. It will keep
going until about eight o’clock: then everybody will dis-

174

The wealth made in the “campo” is lavishly spent in the capital and its
environs, where house parties of fifty people are not uncommon in the
homes of the rich, some of them equipped with Roman magnificence.

Florida Street is the chief shopping and gossiping place in Buenos Aires.
Between five and eight all wheeled traffic is shut off and it is filled with a

brilliant throng of promenaders dressed in the latest styles from Paris and
London.

PiGuelihk, ING HE CAPITAL

appear, the shops will be shut, iron curtains will be drawn
over the windows, and Florida Street will become only a
well-lighted alley. It will be like a city of the dead until
morning.

Money-making by day and display by night seems to be
the motto of the people. The night life of Buenos Aires
is confined to the avenues. The great white way is the
Avenida de Mayo. This avenue is more than one hundred
feet wide, with broad sidewalks, which from nine until
midnight are covered with tables like those on the boule-
vards of Paris. Men, women, and children are walking
about, or sitting at tables listening to the bands playing
within the cafés.

Here is a beer garden, there a restaurant, farther on a
vaudeville show, and there are moving-picture palaces
without number. In the plazas at the ends of the street
one may see children of three and four years out with their
fathers and mothers as late as eleven o’clock at night.
The whole city seems to move more rapidly as midnight
approaches. Everything opens late, and the moving-
picture shows do not close until midnight. The hotel
dinner hours hardly begin until eight and the theatres are
not opened until nine o’clock.

The street noises are many, and multiply as nightfall
comes on. In the older parts of the city the roadways
are so narrow that automobiles have just room to pass.
The regulation that each vehicle must blow a horn at
every street crossing keeps the air vibrating with a con-
tinual honking. Added to this is the sing-song cry of the
newsboys, while in the early morning the peddlers and
hucksters add to the din. So far, however, my sleeping
has not been disturbed by the crowing of roosters, as in

175

THE TAUZOBS THE HEMIseHEKE

Lima, La Paz, and Santiago de Chile. These people do
not keep their chicken coops on their roofs.

Buenos Aires is a city of clubs. The Jockey Club and
its world-famous clubhouse I shall describe later. In
addition to the Jockey Club, there are many others. The
Golf Club has grounds granted by the municipality. The
eighteen-hole course covers many acres and measures
over three miles.

Both men and women play golf, and many of the girls
can swing a club lustily. There are also football teams.
The Football Association has a membership of nearly thirty
thousand players, of whom eighty per cent. are Argenti-
neans. Football, introduced by the British, is played
English fashion. At some of the matches as many as fifty
thousand are present, and considerable betting goes on.

In the suburb of Buenos Aires known as the Tigre there
are canoe and yachting clubs and boats representing seven
or eight clubs compete in yacht races. The Tigre is one
of the most interesting parts of Buenos Aires. It is built
up on islands of the Rio de la Plata and accessible by train
or by boat. The place is a combination of Bangkok and
Venice, being full of winding canals lined with clubhouses
and villas. Gardens border the edges of the canals and
weeping willows bend over and trail their leaves in the
water. There are scores of steam launches going in every
direction, motor boats filled with children flying to and
fro, and canoes gliding along, paddled by young men and
women. The canoes are of brightly varnished hardwood,
shining like gold under the sun. There are also many fruit
vessels. Some of the islands are covered with orchards,
and barges and boats loaded with peaches, vegetables, and
green things creep through the waterways.

176

HIGH LIFE IN THE CAPITAL

There is much gambling in the Tigre. At all the large
clubs there are roulette tables and there are clubs devoted
to gambling where the guests pay to be fleeced.

Buenos Aires has all sorts of theatres, from the Colon
Opera House, one of the largest in the world, to cinemato-
graphs or moving-picture shows. The Colon seats
thirty-seven hundred and has a stage fifty feet wide and
sixty feet from floor to roof. At this theatre, which
during the season is attended by the president of the
republic and the high officials, evening dress is obligatory.
The Odéon is devoted largely to comic operas, the Coliseo
to lyric operas and operettas, while the San Martin has
comedies and acrobatic shows. There are a dozen other
theatres, including some where the plays are given in
Italian.

There are five or six circuses and a vast number of
moving-picture shows. At one of the theatres which has
a stage that can be turned into a circus ring, there are
dances, prize fights, and popular songs. There are also
concerts of classical music and in the winter there is
skating in the ice palaces day and evening. On the roof
of the Casino is a popular roller-skating rink.

Buenos Aires spends millions of dollars a year upon her
amusements. The boxes at the opera house cost a
thousand pesos and upward a season, and a seat in the
orchestra at a good show may cost from fifteen to twenty
dollars in gold.

The scenes at an opera night are as brilliant as those of
any theatre in Europe. Every person in the boxes and
orchestra is in full dress and the gowns of the ladies are
more costly than those at a White House reception. The
dresses come chiefly from Paris, and as for jewels, |

177

THE, TAC ORF ELE Hvar care be

venture to say there is a good half peck of diamonds
scattered over the feminine part of the audience.

So much for entertainment. The city has its serious
aspect as well. There are churches, charities, museums,
libraries, schools, and newspapers. There is a great
cathedral, which covers more than an acre, and will hold
nine thousand people.

Buenos Aires is the largest Catholic city of the world.
Ninety-six per cent. of the Argentineans are Roman
Catholics. Protestants are freely tolerated, however, and
there is a live, up-to-date Young Men’s Christian Associa-
tion. There is an American Methodist Church, attended
by more English people than Americans I regret to say,
and also a Church of England congregation.

The city has a library of two hundred thousand volumes,
a National Museum of Fine Arts, a Natural History
Museum, an Historical Museum, and many private collec-
tions of paintings.

There are hospitals of various kinds, including one for
lunatics that has two thousand inmates, and another for
infants, where mothers can bring their unwanted off-
spring and have them taken care of with no questions
asked. In this foundling asylum foster mothers nurse the
children, and the little ones are carefully reared.

An interesting feature of Buenos Aires is its great city
of the dead, situated in the heart of the town. This is
the Recoleta Cemetery, where the departed sleep in
palaces. The place is divided into streets paved with
cement blocks and faced with the homes of the dead, a
house and lot for each family. The houses are little
marble structures entered by doors of iron network
through which can be seen the vaults and coffins within.

178

HIGH LIFE IN THE CAPITAL

The main vaults are above, but there are other vaults
below. In the centre at the back there is usually an
altar decorated with lace and flowers. | spent an hour in
the cemetery, walking through street after street. Some
had crosses over the entrances and many had wonderful
statues on each side of their doors.

The Recoleta Cemetery is beautifully planned. The
streets radiate from a circular plaza like the spokes of a
wheel. As I stood at the hub of this wheel I saw black-
clad women walking up and down the avenues. Nearly
all had flowers in their hands or servants with them carry-
ing baskets of flowers. They were decorating the houses.

In addition to these private dwellings of the dead, there
are others which might be called apartment houses.
These are larger structures, each of which will hold from a
dozen to fifteen bodies. There are also chapels as big as
churches, with two stories of vaults beneath.

A single chapel may have room for fifteen hundred
bodies. The vaults are finished in marble and are entered
by wide marble steps from the interior of the chapel. For
those who are so poor that they can command neither a
private burial house nor a place in the chapel, there are
tenement vaults, equipped with pigeonholes, which can
be rented as homes for the dead. Each pigeonhole
is about two feet square and deep enough to take in a
coffin. These are arranged in blocks of five hundred.
When a niche is filled it is walled up with a slab upon which
may be placed a photograph of the deceased, covered with
glass. Below this is a little shelf on which flowers or a
burning oil lamp may stand.

_ The funeral processions differ from ours. At funerals of
~ the well-to-do a landau with glass sides goes in advance of
179

THESTAIS OF OTHE HEMISBRERE

the hearse. In this are piled the floral offerings. The hearse
is drawn by four or six black horses; and on the box sit two
men clad in liveries of black and silver and wearing cocked
hats. It is open at the sides and consists of a canopy
supported by four life-sized figures of Ethiopians carved
out of ebony. It is decorated with six huge plumes made
of black ostrich feathers. The coffin lies on a black cloth
in which the initials of the dead are worked in silver.
According to law the funeral must be within twenty-
four hours after death and is generally announced by
newspaper advertisements such as the following:

GUILLERMO ARMADERO
OFbe Pal
Died February 16, 1915.

His wife, Mariana V.; his children, Manuel Benedicta and Amanda;
his mother, Francisca G. Lavelle; his father-in-law, Antonio P. Valdez;
his brothers, Luis and Carlos; his sister, Maria; his brother-in-law,
José; his grandchildren, uncles, nephews, cousins and other relatives
invite you to accompany the remains of the deceased to the Recoleta
Cemetery, Friday, the 17th, at 2:30 P. M.

In the Church of the Holy Cross a mass The leave-taking of
for the eternal repose of his soul will be the deceased will be
sung from 7 to 10 A. M., the body being by card.
present. The family will take part in the
one at 10 A. M. Invitation only.

The words “leave-taking will be by card” mean that the
friends are not expected to condole with the family at the
- funeral, but that their cards will be taken by the servant
in black livery, who may stand near the grave, or that
they can be left at the house or at the church. An
acknowledgment of such a card is usually made by the
family, often expressed by the single word “ Agradecido,”
which means: “I thank you for your sympathy.”

180

CHAPTER XXV
WITH THE WORKERS

T IS a mistake to suppose that the Argentine popula-
tion is wholly made up of land barons and cattle
kings. It has also tens of thousands of labourers,
thousands of small farmers, and millions who have

never had a silver spoon in their mouths. The people are
largely of foreign birth, fully one fourth of the whole
population being composed of Italian peasants who have
come here to settle, or as “swallow immigrants.” In
addition, there are hundreds of thousands of Spaniards,
Russians, Austrians, and Syrians. Then there is the
large class of poor Argentineans serving as cowboys on
great estates and living from hand to mouth. They dwell
in mud huts, cook their mutton and beef over the coals,
and, like as not, sleep on the floor, which in many a home
is the bare ground.

Buenos Aires contains some of the most sumptuous
palaces of this hemisphere. It has a costly Capitol and
long avenues lined with magnificent buildings. Upon
its streets one sees the best-dressed men and women on
earth. But there is another side to the picture. The
city of palaces is also a city of hovels, a city of warrens.
The outskirts are peppered with sheet-iron shacks and
mushroom one-story boxes standing out on the plain
without regard to order or sightliness. The suburbs are
the meanest I have seen anywhere, and the city has places

181

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

where people are crowded together as in the slums of
New York and London.

The tenement sections are made up largely of con-
ventillos, immense buildings of one or two stories set up
along narrow passages or around small courts. Each
conventillo contains scores upon scores of tiny, one-roomed
homes. A single room may be the dwelling-place of one
or more families, and in some cases it is so small that the
washing and cooking have to be done outside in the court.
Many of them have but one bed, occupied perhaps by the
parents, while the rest of the family sleep on the floor.
There are no means of heating such dwellings, which
look more like caves than homes of twentieth-century
human beings.

Many buildings of this character were wiped out by
the new street improvements, but others still lie in the
shadows of the great stores and fine public buildings. |
visited one the other day. It was not far from the
Grand Opera House, where the charge for a seat in the pit
is enough to feed a poor family two weeks. This con-
ventillo was a two-story building surrounding a court
about six feet in width and two hundred feet long. The
walls (running the length of the court) were so close to-
gether that the stone flagging was perceptibly wet, and
I could feel the dampness through the soles of my shoes.
Galleries along the outside of the second stories half
’ shaded the court, projecting over the apartments below.
I peered into some of the rooms, each of which held a
family. They were about twelve feet square and their
only light and ventilation came from a door in the centre.
Just outside each room, in the court, was a bowl or box of
charcoal, the cook stove of the family within. Some of the

182

El Tigre is a combination of Bangkok and Venice, being built upon is-
lands and full of winding canals. The waterways are lined with the
houses of the clubs which compete here in annual regattas, and casinos
where those who wish may gamble.

While primarily an agricultural country, Argentina has some fifty thou-
sand factories, ninety-five per cent. of which are in Buenos Aires, where an
industrial school has been established with courses in various trades.

WITH THE WORKERS

bowls were alight, and pots of steaming soup rested upor
them. Here they were broiling meat over the coals; there
they were cooking macaroni; farther on they were stewing
or boiling. The people were mostly Italians. Many of the
women were young and there were girl mothers of four-
teen and fifteen, washing and cooking while their babies
sprawled on the stones. The families in the second stories
did their cooking on the galleries about the court.

There were swarms of children of all ages and sizes,
from infants in arms to half-grown men and women,
Notwithstanding their surroundings, they seemed happy
and healthy. The climate here is good, and the mortality
rate of Buenos Aires compares favourably with that of
other great cities. When I first came here it was thirty-
three for every thousand people. Now it is less than that
of Liverpool or Manchester, and much lower than that of
Madrid. The death-rate is about fifteen per thousand,
whereas that of London is eighteen, of Paris the same, and
of Madrid more than twenty-seven. New York is the
healthiest of the large cities, having had a death-rate as
low as eleven per thousand in recent years.

In this court big families were the rule. Some had as
many as ten children. Children and babies and parents
and grown-up sons and daughters may all sleep together
in one of these tiny hovels. The birth-rate is large, that
of the Italians being about fifty per cent. higher than the
average birth-rate of Europe.

Food prices are high, but the markets are good and
vegetables and fruits cost less than in the United States.
Most families buy their bread, which the poor have no
facilities for baking. Bakers are licensed and carry the
bread from house to house. But little cornmeal is used.

183

THE. TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

Many onions are eaten, and a frequent sight is the onion
peddler going about with long strings of onions over his
shoulders. Beef is sold by the kilo of two and one fifth
pounds, and many other things are sold the same way.
Milk is sold by the litre, as are wine and kerosene oil.

The people live simply, the average Argentine family
either in the cities or out on the farm spending much less
for its food than a family of the same class in the United
States. Many people eat but one hearty meal a day,
and that in the evening after they have stopped work.
They have only a cup of tea, or tea and a piece of dry
bread, upon rising, with perhaps another cup of tea and
bread at noon. If they are Italians or Spaniards they
may take wine instead of tea; but if they are Argentineans
they will begin the morning with a cup of maté, the
Paraguayan tea.

The Italians are welcomed as immigrants when they
come to stay. Most of them come from the farms of
Lombardy, and are good agriculturists, not afraid to work,
and thrifty. Many of them send a large proportion of
their savings back to Italy. Where they rent farms they
live meanly, saving their money to buy land, and adding
to their possessions until they finally accumulate con-
siderable holdings. The large numbers who come without
expecting to stay—the ‘‘swallow immigrants,’ whom I
have mentioned—are usually good workers but they
carry home to Italy nearly all they earn.

The poor Argentineans restrict their labour largely to
the ranches and to the live-stock industry, serving as
cowboys, or gauchos. They like to work with cattle, and
before the era of fences began they herded the stock on
horseback. They are poor mechanics, leaving most of

184

WITH THE WORKERS

such work and hard manual labour to be done by foreign-
ers. The Italians and Spaniards have built the railroads,
and are the masons, carpenters, and mechanics of Buenos
Aires. They are good workmen, and their wages are less
than those for similar labour in the United States.

Of late years labour organizations have grown in number
and power; but they are still political machines rather than
trades unions proper. They have no sick funds or
benevolent features, and strikes are generally short.
Most employers prefer to have work done by contract,
particularly in harbour improvements and public works
generally, where excavations can be done by the yard.
The contractor hires his gang of men and is responsible for
the work. Such contractors often have stores and
furnish food for the men. There are also stores on the
large estancias, where goods are furnished to the hands and
their value deducted from the pay envelopes.

The wages of farm hands change with the season. A
man may pay fifty cents a day for seeding and three times
as much for harvesting and thrashing. The pay is higher
on the farms near the cities, but in the back provinces they
have been sometimes as low as twenty-five cents a day.
They always go up at harvest time.

_ Every large estate has lodging places for its hired men
and a common eating-house. Tenant houses and also
mud huts and iron sheds are scattered over the farms.
The chief food furnished on the big estancias is meat. I
know of a man who has one hundred employees. He
kills one steer and two young sheep a day. The steer
usually weighs about six hundred pounds, and the two
sheep one hundred and fifty pounds. This means that he
furnishes meat to the amount of seven hundred and
185

THE TAILOR THES HEMISPHERE

fifty pounds live weight per day for one hundred people.
The gauchos have grown up on it. When one of them
takes a trip he usually carries his food with him in the
shape of raw meat. When he grows hungry he makes a
fire and cooks some, keeping the balance for the next
meal.

As to women’s work in Argentina, sentiment is beginning
to change. A few years ago a woman could hardly go
alone through the streets of Buenos Aires without running
the risk of insult. A girl was not supposed to go out
without a companion and it was thought improper for
girls to hold clerical positions or to act as typists, stenog-
raphers, or clerks. To-day many of the best business
establishments of Buenos Aires employ women. The
largest department store here does a business of over
seventeen million dollars a year, and pays out several
million dollars in salaries, and of its three thousand
employees, six hundred and fifty are women. It has
seventeen women among its commercial travellers.

There are a number of women operators employed by
the telephone company, but they are not “hello”’ girls.
The Argentinean does not understand the word ‘‘hello.”
When he calls up central he shouts “Oila” to get the
operator’s attention, and then asks her to have the
courtesy to connect him with his butcher, baker, or
candlestick-maker.

The most respectable profession for young women in
Argentina is school-teaching. This is due to the intro-
duction of American schoolmarms. A generation or more
ago, during the presidency of Sarmiento, the first female
school-teacher was appointed. Sarmiento had been
minister to the United States and while there he met

186

WITH THE WORKERS

Horace Mann, who interested him in our system of educa-
tion. After Sarmiento became president of the republic
he introduced our educational system. He sent to the
United States for a large number of American women
teachers and established normal schools and other schools
throughout the republic. They did so well that other
Yankee girls came, with the result that school-teaching
became popular with the native women. Many girls of
good families have made teaching their profession and
there are now in the republic seventeen normal schools for
women alone. There is also a vocational school where
girls are taught glove-making, embroidery, needlework,
and artistic decoration. There are two cooking schools
for women in Buenos Aires, one of them supported by the
city.

CHAPTER XXVI
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC

URING my stay here I have met the president
of the Argentine Republic. The ruling powers
of Argentina are splendidly housed. The great
Government Palace facing the waterfront at

the lower end of the Plaza de Mayo covers more than two
acres. It is four hundred feet long and two hundred and
fifty feet wide, one of the largest buildings on the South
American continent. The Pink House, as it is called, is of
brick covered with stucco, and its old-rose colour reminds
one of the great Winter Palace at Petrograd on the banks
of the Neva. In size as well as in colour it is in striking
contrast to our White House in Washington. It has
three stories and its surroundings, including the many at-
tendants in uniform, are more elaborate and ornate than
those about our president.

I have had interviews with the leading officials of the
government from the president down, discussing with
them the present and future conditions of their country
and its relations with the United States. As might be
expected, their hope and pride in the land are unbounded,
and the most casual visitor sees grounds for their great
expectations.

On the question of rivalry with the United States the
men in official life are very diplomatic and declare that the
feeling between the two nations is of the friendliest

188

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC

possible nature. They say that Argentina has enormous
resources and is growing so fast that it has no time to be
jealous of any one. It is well satisfied with its place in the
sun, as well as with what the good Lord has given it in the
way of resources. My next inquiry brought up a question
often asked by North Americans: Will there ever be a
United States of South America or a union of the South
American republics? The men in public life generally
answer “No,” and appear to think such a union not only
improbable, but undesirable. As they say, Argentina is
just beginning to grow, and will continue to multiply in
population and wealth for generations to come.

The country could easily support ten times its present
population, and would then have fewer people than the
United States has now. I asked whether the country might
not be Italianized by the great immigration from Europe,
but the heads of the state insisted that the Argentinean of
the future will be much the same as the citizens of to-day.
They say that there is so much land that the republic can
assimilate immigrants for a long time to come.

After my interview at the Pink House I took a taxicab,
and, for about thirty-five cents of our money, motored
through the wide Avenida de Mayo, the Pennsylvania
Avenue of Buenos Aires, to the Capitol, where Congress
meets. This building is one of the world’s most imposing
structures. It stands facing a magnificent plaza which
was carved out of the business part of the city. For this
park four blocks of buildings were torn down and the
ground was built up and covered with grass, trees, and
shrubs. Fine statues were erected, fountains were
placed, and other decorative work was done at a total
cost of five million dollars.

189

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

The great marble building facing this plaza reminds one
a little of our Capitol at Washington. It has four stories,
and from its centre rises a dome which weighs thirty
thousand pounds. This rests upon pillars of white
granite, but it was necessary also to construct an inverted
dome beneath in order to provide adequate support.
The architecture is Greco-Roman in style. The centre is
semi-circular, with a wing on each side and a projecting
pavilion at each corner. The Capitol contains the national
halls of the House of Deputies and the Senate, the secre-
taries’ offices, the committee rooms, and a library. The
furnishings are magnificent.

This building is like the State House of Pennsylvania and
the Capitol building at Albany in its scandalous extrava-
gance. The original estimates were six million pesos, but
the cost was more than five times that sum. Over and
above this, fabulous sums were spent for decoration and
furniture. Noone knows where much of the money went.

The Congress of the Argentine Republic sits from May
first to September thirtieth. The House sits Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the Senate on the other
days of the week. The Congress is similar to ours in its
organization. The Senate has thirty members, two from
the capital and two from each province, elected by a
special body of electors in the capital, and by the legis-
latures in the provinces. The House of Representatives
consists of one hundred and twenty deputies, elected by
the people. By the constitution there must be one
deputy for every thirty-three thousand inhabitants.
The deputies are elected for four years, but one half go
out every two years. A deputy must be at least twenty-
five years of age and have been for four years a citizen.

190

Concentration of most of the lands in the hands of large holders
makes conditions difficult for the ambitious immigrant. The living stan-
dards of both tenant farmer and homesteader are much lower than in the
United States.

The estanciero furnishes his employees generous rations of raw meat
which they carry with them when working far afield and cook in the open.

The Avenida de Mayo is the Fifth Avenue and the Pennsylvania
Avenue of Buenos Aires. It is a splendid thoroughfare a mile and a half
long, at the end of which rises the great dome of the national Capitol.

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC

The senators must be not under thirty years of age, and
must have been citizens for six years. They are elected for
terms of nine instead of six years, as with us. Both sena-
tors and deputies receive salaries of seventy-five hundred
dollars a year. The president gets an annual salary of
about forty-two thousand dollars of our money and has,
in addition, about thirteen thousand dollars for his official
expenses. The vice-president has a salary of about six-
teen thousand dollars, with ten thousand five hundred
dollars for official expenses. Each of the eight cabinet
officers gets about sixteen thousand dollars per annum.

There are property qualifications for all congressmen,
and a senator must have an income of at least eight
hundred dollars a year. All money appropriations must
originate in the House of Deputies, and only the deputies
have a voice in fixing taxation.

In addition to the national government, the republic
has state governments and legislatures such as we have.
Each of the fourteen provinces elects its own governor,
parliament, and judges, and each has its own constitution,
courts, and laws, but such laws must not conflict with the
national laws.

As far as individual rights are concerned, there are lib-
erty and equality, and before the law the foreigner has the
same rights as a citizen. There are no titles of nobility,
property is inviolable, and the state sees that the father
provides for his children. In our country a man can
make a will giving his possessions to whomsoever or
whatsoever he pleases, and cut off his daughter or son with
a nickel. In Argentina the laws provide that a father
must leave his children at least four fifths of his fortune,
while a husband, if he has no children, has to leave at

191

THE: PAILZOR WHE HEMISRB ERE

least half of his property to his wife. An unmarried son is
compelled to leave his parents two thirds of his property,
and only unmarried persons without parents or other legal
heirs can make wills disposing of their possessions wholly as
they see fit.

The government has a national council of education.
Primary education is free and compulsory for all children
of from six to fourteen years of age. About two thirds of
those of school age are in attendance. There are twenty-
five thousand teachers in the primary and secondary
schools, with a million or more pupils attending them.
There are forty-two national colleges, with some ten
thousand students. There are national universities at
Cérdoba, Buenos Aires, La Plata, Rosario, Corrientes, and
Tucuman. The university at Cérdoba is one of the oldest
in the New World. It was founded in 1613, antedating
Harvard by twenty-three years and the first charter of
William and Mary by eighty years. There are also
schools and colleges for women and a large number of the
teachers are women.

The country has five hundred and twenty newspapers,
of which more than four hundred are in the Spanish
language. There are four newspapers published in
Italian, five in English, five in German, and others in
Scandinavian.

Buenos Aires has an up-to-date press. There are
humorous papers with striking cartoons and illustrated
journals that compare favourably with those of the
United States. There are also great dailies with tele-
graphic dispatches from all parts of the world. La
Prensa and La Nacién, published regularly for more than
half a century, have always held high rank for their in-

192

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC

dependent criticisms and their excellent news service.
Buenos Aires has two English dailies. One is the Standard
founded in 1861 by the Mulhalls, the well-known statis-
ticlans, and the other is the Buenos Aires Herald. Both
are enterprising, the Herald being especially noted for its
agricultural and stock-breeding news.

I have gone through several of the newspaper offices.
That of La Prensais famous the world over. It stands
on the Avenida de Mayo in the very heart of the city. The
building is of white stone, five stories high, with a golden
bronze figure of Fame rising eighteen feet above the top of
its tower. The interior is palatial. There are a festival
hall, four halls for public gatherings, and quarters for the
entertainment of distinguished visitors to Buenos Aires,
consisting of a drawing room, dining room, and smoking
and billiard rooms, with dressing rooms attached. The
paper maintains a free public library, and has a medical
department, where doctors and specialists treat without
charge all who will come. There is also a legal depart-
ment, where any one who wishes may have the advice of a
reputable lawyer as to his business or personal rights, as
well as a chemical laboratory devoted to experimental,
agricultural, and industrial uses. The paper issues daily
weather reports from its own observatory. It has a
school of music, where the best vocal and instrumental
instructors train without charge those who show signs of
talent.

The Prensa is beyond doubt one of the great newspapers
of to-day. It is at the head of its class in all South
America. Its circulation often runs to several hundred
thousand copies daily, and it consumes white paper
amounting to thirty-five tons every twenty-four hours.

193

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

Its plant is run by electricity generated in its own build-
ing.

I have been interested in the advertisements of this
paper, and in its charges, which vary according to the
character and purse of the advertiser. For instance, an
employer advertising for a servant pays thirty cents a line,
while the servant advertising for a situation is charged
only ten cents a line. A doctor who wants patients must
pay two dollars a line, while the poor girl out of a job gets
the same space for her ‘‘situation-wanted-female”’ notice
for ten cents. The Prensa contains each month about
sixty thousand small advertisements; and every day there
are from sixteen to twenty pages of official, professional,
or auction advertisements and other announcements. Its
telegraphic tolls are close to a thousand dollars a day,
while its annual fees to correspondents run high into the
thousands.

194

CHAPTER XXVII
SETTLERS AND SWALLOWS

MMIGRATION into Argentina was greatly changed
by the World War. There has been an increase in the
number of Germans and Poles and natives of every
class from Austria, Hungary, and the Balkan States.

Until 1914, the bulk of the immigration was Latin. The
Italians began to arrive about sixty years ago, and for a
long time came at the rate of from fifty to one hundred
thousand per annum. The Spanish immigrants have been
numerous, and the Italians and Spaniards furnished about
two thirds of the new blood of the nation. Even now one
fifth of the population is Italian and after them come the
Spaniards. There are many Russians, as well as Syrians
and Armenians. The immigrants from North America
total only a few hundred a year.

The government has erected big hotels at Buenos Aires,
Rosario, and at Bahia Blanca, where the immigrants are
lodged until they can be sent to their new homes. The
Immigrant Hotel at Buenos Aires is one of the sights of
the city. Standing on the banks of the Rio de la Plata,
within a stone’s throw of the docks where the immigrants
step off the steamer, its surroundings must make them
think they have dropped down into fairyland. The
buildings face a beautiful park, filled with flowers, tropical
trees, and playing fountains. The hotel covers an acre or
more and is a big brick building of four stories. Adjoining

195

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

are other buildings containing hospitals and offices. The
ground floor is paved with tiles, and its walls are panelled
with glazed tiles to the height of your head. Everything is
as white as fresh snow. The second floor has dormitories
so large that they can accommodate eight thousand
nightly. The beds are mattresses of canvas, slung in
berths like those of a sleeping car, and so arranged that
they can be cleaned every day. The rooms are disinfected
and absolutely free from vermin.

I went through the great dining room and watched
about eight hundred men and women eating their dinner.
The tables for the men were at one end of the room, those
for the women at the other. The men kept their hats on
and many of the women had shawls wrapped around their
heads. Their clothes were as motley as those of a market
crowd in some out-of-the-way corner of Europe. Not a
few of the immigrants were fine-looking and all seemed to
be happy.

From the dining room | went to the kitchen, a huge
room walled and floored with tiles. The cooking is
done by electricity, mainly in great round boilers, each
of which holds over one hundred gallons. The boilers
have nickel-plated lids and are of snow-white enamel,
like a bath-tub. They are kept at just the right tem-
perature by steam pipes. I tasted some of the soup and
liked it.

Later | attended a lecture and moving-picture show
given for the immigrants to help them to choose their
homes. The pictures were farming scenes displaying the
resources of Argentina and showing how the various crops
are raised. Activities in many different provinces were
shown on the screen, and we had views of grape-growing

196

SETTLERS AND SWALLOWS

in Mendoza, sugar-planting in Tucum4n, and corn-harvest-
ing in Entre Rios. The immigrants were intensely in-
terested.

The hotel has a large employment bureau for the hiring
out of immigrants under contracts that fix their wages
and terms of service. Any infringement of contract by
the employer is prosecuted by the government without
expense to the labourer.

An interesting section of this employment bureau is that
devoted to placing the women as house servants. The
housekeeper in need of a servant comes to the | mmigrant
Hotel to look over the women and girls ready to go out
into service. She picks out the one whom she likes, and,
if the two parties agree, the contract is made out. A
ticket is then given which permits the servant to leave the
building with her employer. But the contract is kept at
the hotel and in case of trouble the matter can be brought
into court. Connected with this department are three
policemen detailed to follow the girls and inspect the
houses to which they are taken. There is every protection
against white slavery, for the government tries to act as
the guardian of its new children.

Complete records are kept of the newcomers. Their
photographs, measurements, and thumb prints are taken,
and one copy of each record is filed in the hotel, while
another is sent to the police station nearest to the immi-
grant’s place of settlement. No one is allowed to land if
he is more than sixty years of age and has no relative who
will be responsible for his care. All are examined as to
possible disease, and the physically defective are returned
to the port whence they came. The immigrants have
the right to remain five days in the hotel and some of the

197

THESDAILC OE THESMEMISEORKE

interior cities have arrangements for keeping them pending
employment.

Many foreigners who come to Argentina have no idea of
making this country their permanent home. They come
to work for a year or so, expecting to go back with what
they have saved. Some stay only for a season. This is
true of thousands from northern Italy and northern Spain,
countries whose seasons are just the opposite of those of
Argentina. When it is winter in northern Italy the men
can aid in harvesting the crops here in Argentina and go
back home for their spring ploughing. The wages are so
much higher that they can pay their steamer fares and
still make money on the trip. There are something like
forty or fifty thousand immigrants who return every year.
Some have saved enough to buy land at home. The
Italian’s great desire is to own a little farm in Italy. The
result is that he begrudges every penny spent away from
his native land, cuts his expenses to the bare necessities
of life, and returns in about the same clothing that he
wore upon his arrival. When he has saved two or three
hundred dollars he is ready to go back and take the money
with him.

These men carry millions of dollars out of the country.
They are known as “swallow immigrants,’’ for they flit
back and forth like migratory birds. They do not con-
fine themselves to Argentina. Some stop first in Brazil
to aid in harvesting the coffee crop, and thence move on to
Uruguay and Argentina. These “‘swallows”’ are so numer-
ous that the steamship companies make a great deal
carrying them back and forth. The total fares from these
passengers amount to something like thirty-five million
dollars per annum, and this traffic is said to give the

198

The marble Hall of Congress in Buenos Aires reminds Americans of
their own Capitol at Washington. Its cost, as with many of our public
buildings, vastly exceeded the estimates, five million dollars being spent
on the plaza alone.

In the Recoleta Cemetery, the dead sleep in little marble palaces. It is
divided into paved streets lined with the homes of the departed, a house

and a lot for each rich family and humbler, more congested quarters for the
poor.

SETTLERS AND SWALLOWS

steamship owners a profit of about twenty-five million
dollars.

In spite of the “‘swallows,”’ the bulk of the immigrants
become permanent residents. The population of Argen-
tina, which is over eight and one half million, has been
largely built up by immigration. But it is a fact re.
gretted by many Argentineans that the paternal care
extended to the immigrant is limited to the poorest class
of day labourers. They may be called “Colonists,” but
the real colonist, who becomes at once a part of the
country by taking up land of his own, is rare. It is the
fault of the large owners who, in turning to agriculture,
have tried to be farmers without doing any work, or
absentee landlords, who do not allow their tenants any
sure tenure or proper equipment to make the land
profitable. The native well-to-do Argentinean secretly
despises the man who works with his hands. He wishes to
own a great estate, and buys on a cash or credit basis all
the land he can get, depending on the foreigners to do the
labour and build up the country. He is willing to trust to
the unearned increment or rise in the value of land for his
profit.

I do not believe that Argentina is a good place for the
American farmer. If a number of our people would club
together and bring their families, establishing large —
colonies, they might make congenial social conditions for
themselves. But the domestic and social life of the
Italians and Spaniards is not suited to Americans, and the
difficulties of mastering the language are a great draw-
back.

The Italian or Spaniard will put up with all sorts of
hardships. His ordinary home is a mud hut and his

199

THEATAIL(OF THE: HEMISPHERE

whole family is crowded into one or two rooms. Often
the house has no windows, and a small opening in the
side walls with a board shutter gives the only light. The
lamp may be a bottle of oil with a hole through the cork
and a few threads of cotton for a wick. Frequently the
cooking is done over an open fire on the ground, with the
kettle hung from a tripod made of three sticks of wood.

The European immigrant expects his whole family to
help him. Men, women, and children go out together to
plough and to reap, working from daylight till dark, and
later still when the moon shines. Many settlers start
with farms on shares; but some rent lands for a fixed sum.
A few work for wages, which, as I have said, are far lower
than in the United States, except in harvesting time.

One of the chief troubles of the settler is the land-holding
system. Most of the country is divided into very large
tracts. There are over a hundred men, each of whom
owns nearly two hundred thousand acres or more. There
are nearly two hundred who possess from fifty to one
hundred thousand each, while a thousand and more hold
from twelve to twenty-four thousand acres. At least
fifty thousand persons own from two hundred to eight
hundred acres, and the holdings are so close together that
it is almost impossible to build up a population of small
farmers. Only by dividing the big estates could satis-
factory social conditions be created, and the pride and
conservatism of the owners make that possibility remote.
The government is doing what it can to encourage sub-
division, and a few estancteros have sold lands to the immi-
grants, but the majority of the great estates remain
intact.

The best of the lands have gone into the hands of rich

200

SETTLERS AND SWALLOWS

Argentineans and foreigners. The total area of the
republic is about seven hundred and thirty million acres,
of which perhaps half is fitted for agriculture and grazing.
The rest is mountain and desert, a great deal of which can
never be used. The greater part of this belongs to the
government, the public lands including altogether about
two hundred million acres, three fourths of which are in
Patagonia. These lands are mainly arid, but there are
some rivers running through them that may be used for
irrigation. There are also public lands in the north, but
they are covered with woods and must be cleared before
being farmed. Some of the government lands have been
granted to colonies, which are being encouraged. Land is
allotted to companies that undertake to bring in settlers;
grazing tracts are sold at low prices in parcels of six
thousand acres. Government lands may also be leased,
and certain provisions are made for stocking them.

There are a large number of colonies in Argentina, some
of which are very old. There are German, Russian,
Swiss, Austrian, Italian, and Spanish settlements. In
Chubut there are several Welsh colonies, and there is one
of Finns. There is also a colony made up of Boers from
South Africa.

Among the most interesting of such settlements are
those belonging to Hebrews. Baron Hirsch, who gave
ten million dollars to assist the Jews to leave Russia, sent
agents to Argentina where they bought a tract of good
bottom land, comprising about thirty million acres. For
this they paid something like twelve or fifteen thousand
dollars per square league, the total sum expended amount-
ing to more than two million dollars. The Jewish Colon-
ization Fund has aided this work, and there are now about

201

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

forty thousand Jews in Argentina. Some of them are
settled in villages and own large areas of farming lands
near by. They have built up communities from which
they go out to work on the farms. Many of them own
their lands in severalty, and some of the villages have three
or four thousand population. Not a few have established
stores in different parts of Argentina, so that there are
now Jewish merchants everywhere. The grain trade is
largely controlled by them. They have shown the same
business shrewdness that is common to their race the
world over.

My inquiries concerning lands and their values lead me
to conclude that the prices vary quite as much as they do
in the United States, and are subject to the same fluctua-
tions. In 1885 one could buy real estate in the heart of
Buenos Aires for less than a dollar a square yard, while in
the same locality, thirty years later, one would have had to
pay a thousand dollars a square yard. Farming lands to
be had for a song a half century ago bring a half million
dollars a square league to-day. This is especially true
in the province of Buenos Aires.

Land here is usually sold by the hectare, equal to two
and one half acres. The price depends largely on the
character of the land and upon its location. The soil
varies as much as it does in the United States and some
public lands, sold at auction, bring as low as sixteen cents
an acre; whereas, if near streams or railroad stations, they
may sell for several dollars per acre. Argentina’s first
need is the growth of a class of small farmers who own the
land they work and realize that their success and their
country’s progress are bound up together.

202

CHAPTER XXVIII
OUR OPPORTUNITY IN ARGENTINA

HE Argentine markets offer great opportunities
to the capitalists, manufacturers, and business
men of the United States. The World War
threw it wide open, and offered us advantages
that may not come again in a century. Until that time
the big things of this part of the world went into European
hands. The foreign trade of Argentina, exports and
imports, now amounts to some two billion dollars per
annum and she ranks second in our hemisphere as the
best market for foreign goods. Her purchases far sur-
pass those of any other South American country, for her
people are among the most Javish spenders of the whole
world.

Figures give but little idea of the wealth of this great
republic and what it offers to our foreign trade. The
Argentine stands tenth among all the countries on earth
in the average possessions of its inhabitants. Family for
family, it has a purchasing power far greater than that of
Norway or France, and ten times that of Japan.

There are sixty million acres of land in cultivation. The
implements for planting and harvesting them all come
from abroad. Argentina is not a manufacturing country.
The land is generally flat; the streams are sluggish and
there is little water power. Most of the coal is imported.
These conditions are all obstacles to industrial growth,

203

THE TAIL OF THESHEMISPHERE

With the rapid development of her natural resources,
which have already produced enormous wealth, Argentina
has been and will long continue to be one of the very best
markets for the United States and other industrial nations.
European countries have been the largest buyers of her
products, and she has likewise bought most of her manu-
factured goods from the other side of the Atlantic. Even
though American manufacturers find the Argentine their
best South American customer, they have had only a
small slice of her trade. During the war, of course,
American goods had the advantage, but with the resump-
tion of European production, and the rise of unfavourable
conditions of exchange, American exporters encountered
again the keenest kind of competition.

Some American specialties, such as agricultural im-
plements and machinery—the Chicago windmills I saw
scattered over the plains, for instance—have long had a
strong hold on the Argentine market. American moving-
picture films are very popular in all the cities. American
goods generally are well liked in Argentina, but we have
been lacking here, as elsewhere, in the faculty of accommo-
dation. We have not catered to customers with tastes
differing from our own, nor adapted our business ways to
their forms of procedure; but there is no reason why we
should not successfully compete with other nations in
almost any branch of trade. Argentine business men are
as keen and as bustling as ourselves, though they still
cover those qualities with more polite forms of speech
and manner, and will not permit their establishments to
be used as mere dumping grounds for the excess production
of our manufacturing plants.

We have made a good beginning in selling coal to

204

OUR OPPORTUNITY IN ARGENTINA

Argentina, and the long-standing prejudice against the
output of our mines seems to have been overcome. The
price of fuel from abroad rose to exorbitant levels during
the war when there was such a scarcity that some of the
factories and mills stopped running and the railroads
reduced their passenger service. The coal used here is
bituminous, and has been coming largely from England
and Australia. Argentina will always be a customer for
coal or some other kind of fuel, and in the future the
United States ought to have a larger share of this trade.
Some oil has been found and production is increasing, but
the country as a whole is still largely dependent upon
imported coal. Nature seems to have fixed her field of
activity in agriculture and stock raising, and so lavishly is
she endowed in these directions that she has no need to
seek other sources of profit.

With the high cost of fuel and lack of skilled artisans
she cannot produce shoes of good quality though she has
a superabundance of leather. She is a great wool-grower,
but she cannot manufacture woollen goods as well or as
cheaply as she can import them. Her immigrants are
nearly all farm labourers and not trained in industry.

Though the country affords a big opportunity for the
sale of motor cars and all sorts of. vehicles, there are local
reasons why the motor trade will probably grow slowly.
The roads are poor and unlike ours in many ways. They
are usually four to five times as wide as our roads, because
the huge grain wagons, carrying eight or ten tons, often
have two or even three dozen horses hitched to them,
sometimes ten abreast. A country road is more like a
narrow ploughed field than anything else. Few road-
scrapers are used, and such heavy loads produce holes

205

‘FHE: TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

deeper than those in our worst highways. So long as the
huge carts are used the roads must be wide, and so long
as they are wide it is almost impossible to improve them
up to the standards necessary for motor-car use.

The large land holdings, which are a disadvantage to
the country in a general sense, are also a drawback in the
special development of motor sales. The rich estanczeros
are good customers, but their number is limited, while
their tenants, or “‘colonists,’’ cannot afford the luxury of
automobiles. They continue to live by the standards of
the ox-cart period. There are sections around some of
the larger cities which have improved highways, but each
is isolated from the others and the Argentinean of wealth
never thinks of touring through his country.

These conditions produce some unusual factors in the
demand for American cars. The Argentinean living in
the country wants a special model. To suit him its tread
must be several inches broader than the American stand-
ard, and he wants the steering wheel on the right side
because the rules of driving are the opposite of those in
the United States. The American manufacturer can pro-
duce special models only at much higher costs, because
such specialized production throws his factory arrange-
ments out of gear. Hence it would seem necessary for
American dealers to stimulate educational campaigns
for improved roads on which the standard tread would be
satisfactory. On the other hand, the American method
of establishing service stations in connection with sales
agencies and the availability of standardized parts are
proving a great help in the sale of our cars.

Another hindrance to increased use of automobiles is
the excessive price of gasoline. The crude native oils

206

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Argentina, like the United States, has been largely populated by immi-
grants, mostly Italians and Spaniards. For temporary care of the new ar-
rivals the government built great hotels at Buenos Aires and other ports.

From the receiving station in Buenos Aires immigrants are sent to their
places of employment which the government helps them to get. Many are
“swallows” who will work in Argentina only for a season and then return
home with their savings.

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OUR OPPORTUNITY IN ARGENTINA

do not furnish good gasoline, so practically all of it has to
be imported. Here the American motor engines compare
unfavourably with the European. The latter is of small
capacity but high efficiency, developed to meet the lim-
ited supply of gasoline with which Europe has long con-
tended.

Though the introduction of motor trucks and tractors
has lagged far behind touring cars, it will surely increase
in the future. Argentina is improving its roads, and
Buenos Aires has plans for new streets that will cost two
hundred million dollars before they are completed. At
present Buenos Aires does not use as many motor trucks
as any American city one tenth its size.

Argentina offers a rich field for planting American
dollars. The British, Germans, French, Spaniards, and
Italians have long known this and invested their money
at the capital and throughout the republic. The British
are said to own about two thousand million dollars’ worth
of property of one kind or another in Argentina, including
most of the railroads. They have taken the bulk of the
private loans, and look with jealous eyes upon the public
loans placed in the United States. Argentina is rich in
resources, but she needs money from the outside. She is
in about the same position that we were a generation ago,
in that she needs millions for public works of all kinds.
Among the big things under way are the paving of Buenos
Aires and the improvement of the harbour and docks,
while the extension of all sorts of public utilities creates
a constant demand for machinery and supplies.

There is much land improvement going on; irrigation
schemes are projected which require a great deal of capital.
In the valley of the Rio Negro is a project for the redemp-

207

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

tion of three hundred thousand acres of desert, while there
are other plans for dyking and draining the lowlands
along the Parana River that require the expenditure of
millions.

This is not a cheap man’s country. No one with but a
few hundred dollars should come here expecting to reap
thousands. In fact, one’s expense account is higher in
Argentina than in the United States. The better class
hotels are exceedingly costly. At the Plaza, one of the
chief hotels of Buenos Aires, I find the lowest charge for
a room without bath is five dollars per day, and the lowest
price for meals is five dollars. There are, however, a
number of good hotels where the charges are lower. I
pay thirteen dollars a day at ‘““The Grand” for myself
and my secretary, for accommodations that would cost
me at least twice as much at the Plaza. We are on the
American plan, and have two rooms and bath, with
excellent beds and good cooking. We have a breakfast
of coffee and rolls in our room, a table-d’héte luncheon,
and an excellent table-d’héte dinner. Wines and liquors
are high, while my mineral water orders come to almost
as much as the average charges of Rome or Paris.

The commercial traveller coming to Argentina should
bear in mind that he will require a license for selling and
also that there is a tariff on importations. A different
license is charged for each province. Here in Buenos
Aires the annual fee for selling goods varies from two
hundred to two thousand dollars. This annoying and
expensive restriction is frequently avoided by assigning
commercial travellers to some large importing house in
Buenos Aires under whose auspices they work. These
houses often have agencies in other provinces and attach

208

OUR OPPORTUNITY IN ARGENTINA

the foreign agent to their local agent so that he need pay
no license fees at all.

There are also laws requiring all contracts to be written
on stamped paper, the value of the stamps being regulated
by the amount of the contracts, and ranging from five cents
to fifty dollars. All bills of exchange and promissory
notes have to have stamps and certain of the provinces
_ have their own special stamp taxes besides.

In the big customs house at Buenos Aires and the long
line of brick warehouses on the banks of the Rio de la
Plata goods are stored in bond and kept until the duties
are paid. During the hard times of the post-war period
several hundred automobiles were kept in the warehouses
because the men who ordered them had no money to pay:
the tariff upon them. Many of the machines became a
dead loss. All woven stuffs, ready-made underclothing,
boots, shoes, and hats, pay fifty cents ad valorem, and
there is a similar tariff on carriages, harness, and furni-
ture. The tariff on dressed leather, blankets, and un-
bleached linens is forty per cent., that on wool and woollen
stuffs, thirty-five. In addition there are specific articles
subject to special taxes and there are reciprocal tariffs
gauged according to the amount of business done.

No one should expect to do much business in Argentina
or Chile without understanding the Spanish language.
The man who comes here should have money to spend
and time to build up trade properly. Furthermore, he
should be well educated, well dressed, and polite. There
is no place in the world where good manners mean more,
or where they pay quite so well.

One of the great handicaps to development of American
trade in Argentina, as in all other South American coun-

209

THE PAIL OP THE HEMISBHERE

tries, was the lack of American banking facilities.
Amendment of our national banking laws permitting the
establishment of branch banks abroad finally remedied
this situation, with the result that several American
financial institutions are now active in this field. In
Argentina, the National City Bank of New York has
branches in Buenos Aires and Rosario, and eight more
elsewhere in South America. The First National Bank
of Boston, the American Foreign Banking Corporation,
and the Guaranty Trust Company of New York also have
established South American branches. Through a com-
bination of American and Argentine interests the American
Bank of the River Plata was formed to take over the
Banco Mercantil y Agricola de Buenos Aires. The
Bank of Central and South America, organized under
United States laws, is also represented in Argentina.

These American institutions do a general banking
business, dealing in exchange, letters of credit, collections,
and deposits. They do business in American dollars and
Argentine pesos;-and one can buy drafts on the United
States without having to translate the local currency into
pounds, shillings, and pence and then translate the pounds,
shillings, and pence into American dollars. On my earlier
journeys in South American countries I always had to
carry a letter of credit on London, thus paying a tribute
of about one per cent. to the “Old Lady of Threadneedle
Dureecns

The big English, French, German, and Italian banks
here are trade agencies of their respective countries.
They devote themselves to developing that trade, and
are reservoirs of information for their nationals engaged in
business. An American capitalist told me that it is

210

Buenos Aires is one of the great ports of the world, the chief entrance
of a country with the second largest purchasing power on our hemisphere,
yet for many years the lion’s share of her trade went to Europeans.

American-made farm implements are supreme in Argentina and are
found working the land and harvesting the crops in all parts of the Re-
public. The photograph shows a pear orchard of the Rio Negro valley.

OUR OPPORTUNITY IN ARGENTINA

impossible for us to get our share of the business in South
America without American banks. He was interested in
contracts involving millions of dollars, and as long as his
money and commercial paper had to pass through the
English or German banks his competitors knew just what
he was doing.

Our American banks are preventing such “leaks” and
serving as strong agencies for pushing American trade.
They collect information as to the credits of the various
companies and merchants, and keep files of such credits in
Buenos Aires and Rio Janeiro and duplicate files in New
York.

Banking in Argentina is done on a scale as big propor-
tionately as the wheat farming and stock raising. One
native bank in Buenos Aires has a capital of over fifty
million dollars and deposits of more than four hundred mil-
lion dollars in paper, or close upon two hundred million
dollars in gold. This is the National Bank of Argentina,
which has several hundred branches scattered over the re-
public. There are many other banks organized by Argen-
tine capital besides the great foreign banking institutions
which have their headquarters in Europe.

One of the most important of the native banks is the
Banco Hipotecario Nacional, which lends money on real-
estate mortgages, issuing therefor bonds payable to
bearer. These bonds pass from hand to hand. They
are known as cédulas, and are guaranteed by the govern-
ment. They bear five or six per cent. interest and special
provisions are made for their redemption. The law
requires this bank to place fifty per cent. of its profits in a
reserve fund and its safety is carefully guarded. Its
loans are made on farm lands at a low valuation and on

211

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

lots in the cities at sixty per cent. of their assessment.
The rate of interest on the bonds may not exceed six per
cent., and all loans are subject to annual reductions of one
per cent. This bank, which has been in operation for
more than a generation, is said to have been a great factor
in the rapid development of the republic.

There are three big Italian banks, and there is one
Spanish bank with a large capital and surplus. This is the
Banco Espaftol del Rio de la Plata, with sixteen branches
in the capital and many others in different parts of Argen-
tina and Uruguay. Its capital is larger than that of the
National City Bank of New York and it has long been
paying big dividends. The French and Italian banks are
strong and successful. In ordinary times the interest
rates are from eight to ten per cent. But in hard times
one per cent. a month is easily had and the loan brokers
charge more.

The country is financially sound, but our American
investors and exporters are learning that it is subject to
ups and downs, It is rather like old Egypt with its seven
years of plenty and its seven years of famine. On my
first visit the people were still suffering from the panic
following the failure of Baring Brothers. They had had
a boom for ten years, during which more than six
hundred million dollars’ worth of stock was floated, five
hundred million dollars of which was totally lost. The
country quickly recovered from that trouble, however,
and developed at dynamic speed up to the time of the
stringency due to the World War. The emergency
demand for wheat, corn, and meat raised the prices so
high that the country profited from the extraordinary
foreign business created by the troubles abroad. At the

242

OUR OPPORTUNITY IN ARGENTINA

same time, the problem of unemployment became acute,
and there followed a long period of readjustment and
deflation, just as happened in almost all the other countries
of the civilized world.

The well-to-do Argentineans are somewhat spoiled
children of Nature. They are so used to bumper crops
and increasing values in land, live stock, and everything
they own that when reverses come, through rainy harvest
seasons or late frosts, or the reflex of world troubles, they
are likely to become panic stricken. But they recover
quickly and few countries promise more as a permanent
market for American goods and a field for sound invest-
ments than the Argentine Republic.

213

CHAPTER XXIX
A DAY ON AN ESTANCIA

HAVE visited to-day San Juan, the famous estancza

belonging to the sons of Leonardo Pereyra, and typical

of the great cattle farms which have made millionaires

in Argentina. There was bred the Shorthorn bull,
Americus, that sold at auction in Buenos Aires for thirty-
five thousand dollars in gold, at the time the highest price
ever paid for any bull anywhere.

The estancia lies on the Rio de la Plata, almost on the
edge of the city of La Plata and within an hour’s ride of
Buenos Aires. Extending nine miles along the river and
far back into the country, it embraces thirty thousand
acres of as good pasture land as any in Kentucky, divided
up into fields of one hundred acres or more. In these
fields feed some of the finest-bred cattle in the world.

The founder, Sefior Pereyra, was the first Argentinean
to realize the importance of high-class pedigreed stock and
began his herd of Durhams in 1857, when he imported the
bull Defiance and the cow Coral. The next year he
bought the famous bull Don Juan and the cow Dahlia,
and later on other Shorthorns which stand high in stock-
breeding history. On the San Juan estancia to-day are
Herefords with pedigrees dating back fifty years and
Lincoln and Rambouillet sheep that have won silver cups
at fairs all over Argentina.

This vast farm has more than six thousand cows of

eas

So long as Argentina uses her huge grain wagons, pulled sometimes by
twenty or even thirty horses, her roads will continue too wide for scraping
or surfacing, and just so long will sales of our automobiles outside the
cities increase slowly.

“When sold for thirty-five thousand dollars Americus became the world’s
highest priced bull. I found the Argentinians doing more to improve
their beef cattle breeds than our own stockmen with whom they compete

”

in foreign markets.

A DAY ON AN ESTANCIA

fine blood and hundreds of pedigreed bulls. It is used as
the chief breeding establishment to supply the other great
raiches belonging to the family, where there are something
like a hundred thousand cows, and from which are sold
every year many thousand fat steers.

The amount of land the Pereyra family owns runs into
tens of thousands of acres, while their stock exceeds the
wildest ambitions of any Job, past or present. Forty of
the family were on the farm at the time of my visit.

San Juan is one of the most beautiful estates in this
land of millionaire farmers. I have spent the greater
part of the day going over it. The railroad station lies
almost at the gates, and the house is approached through
wide avenues of magnificent trees. I was driven in a
carriage drawn by two blooded horses, for an hour or
more, through a mighty park planted by the family. It
is a eucalyptus forest, the trees of which are a hundred feet
tall and as big around at the base as a hogshead. Here
a stream winds about through the forest, and there one
glimpses a lake about which stand great clumps of bam-
boos. Some of the avenues are lined with palms of many
varieties. There are rustic bridges and islands covered
with tropical verdure. At times I was reminded of some
of the forests of Japan, and again of the wonderful gardens
on the edge of Biskra in the Sahara, the scene of Hichens’s
“Garden of Allah.”

In places this part of the estate looks like a great English
park. There are nearly eight hundred acres in trees
alone, all of them planted by Sefior Pereyra. I saw one
pine tree with a spread of fully fifty feet. When Sefior
Pereyra came from Europe he brought this tree as a tiny
sprig. It was one of the first trees planted upon the

215

THE TAILOR THE HEMISPHERE

estate, for before that time the country was nothing but a
plain covered with grass.

Now there are trees everywhere. They are planted in
the fields as shade for the animals, twenty thousand being
set out every year. I saw a herd of deer feeding in the
forest, all the offspring of a male and two females brought
here some forty years ago. As we rode over the estate
we now and then scared up a wild ostrich. There are
hundreds of them running through the fields, and the
major domo told me that in galloping after the cattle he
often hears a splash and finds that his horse has dashed
into a nest of ostrich eggs.

I despair of describing the fine stock of this estancia.
I am not a cattle breeder and do not speak in technical
terms. The first herd I looked at consisted of fifty
pedigreed Herefords ranging in age from three to eight
years. Their average weight was about a ton, and they
had never been fed on anything but grass. Several of
them were prize cows, and others were destined to win
blue ribbons. One weighed twenty-five hundred pounds
although she was only four years old. She seemed to be
all meat, and when | pressed my thumb into her back it
made hardly a dent. This cow’s name was Lady Clare.
Two of her calves have sold for twelve thousand dollars
each.

_I photographed a two-year-old Durham cow, which
weighed almost two thousand pounds and was perfect of
its kind. Sefior Pereyra has refused fifteen thousand in
gold for her.

My next visit was to the stables where the fine bulls
are kept. There are five stables, each covering perhaps
half an acre. They are long, low buildings, divided up

216

A DAY ON AN ESTANCIA

into great box stalls. The floors are of brick but the
animals stand upon boards covered with bedding about a
foot deep. The doors to the stalls slide on rollers and
everything is in the most modern style. There are thirty
bulls in each stable, but the ventilation is perfect and
there was no stable smell. The stock is washed and
scrubbed every morning, while before they enter the
shows they are treated to a special lotion that makes their
coats shine like satin. They are cared for like so many
kings, each bull having his own private stall fifteen or
twenty feet square. At my request some of the bulls
were led out that I might photograph them. None
weighed much less than a ton, and every one was of
royal blood. Altogether there are about two hundred
bulls, each with a pedigree longer than some of the gene-
alogies in the historical collections of Boston.

Going through the stables, I saw a ten-day-old bull
calf sucking a cow. It was not as big as a Newfoundland
dog, but it wasa perfect Durhamin shape. When | asked
as to its value, I was told that it was worth at least two
thousand dollars. It was so small that I could have lifted
it up in my arms. I venture to say that it is one of the
most valuable pieces of veal on record.

As I rode from herd to herd through the great fields and
looked at these animals I was surprised at their gentle-
ness. Both bulls and cows could be approached and petted
with perfect safety. These cattle are never sworn at, or
roughly treated in any way. A child can go into the stall
of any one of the bulls without danger.

Later I saw the dairy. It contains scores of cows which
have been bred by crossing the Holsteins with other
breeds. In this way Sefior Pereyra made a milking strain

217

THE WALL OF THE HEMISPHERE

of his own. It is said to be superior to any other for
Argentine use.

Then I was shown some of the sheep. There are thou-
sands of them, including the finest Lincolns, Rambouillets,
and Blackfaces. All the sheep are pedigreed, and in the
sheep stables we saw some of the prize animals. They are
kept in great pens under roofs, each pen being fifteen feet
square, and there are about twenty sheep to the pen.
Thoroughbred Angora goats are another product of the
farm.

I drove over the fields in which the fine breeding animals
are kept. These fields are in squares, some of them one
hundred and seventy acres in extent. They are so ar-
ranged that there is a well and a windmill for every four
fields. ‘The windmill is inside a ring and the gates from
each field open into the ring, so that the stock from each
field can be kept separate when driven in for water.
Despite its great size the estate employs only two hundred
men, the larger number of whom are used about the
stables, the park, and the gardens, and in the service of the
family. On some of Sefior Pereyra’s other estancias,
where there are from twenty to eighty thousand cattle,
only one third as many men are needed. The cattle are
allowed to run as they please, and the only thing to be done
is to keep up the fences and see that nothing happens to
the stock.

On this estate the peons and head men have their homes
rent free in addition to their wages. Each family receives
also from seven to ten acres of land for its own use, besides
grain and corn for a few pigs and cows. Two cows for
milking and an allowance of meat according to its size
are also allotted to every household. In a large family

218

A DAY ON AN ESTANCIA

the meat ration may be ten or twelve pounds per day,
and in a small one only three or four pounds. Two
animals are killed every day for the use of the estancia
alone.

When the agents of the great packing companies come
out periodically the stock is shown to them in large herds.
There may be a thousand in a single herd, and the buyer
may take the whole thousand or he may select only seven
or eight hundred. He buys what will make the best
chilled beef, paying by weight. The average steer on the
hoof will bring from one to two hundred pesos, or from
eighty to one hundred and sixty dollars of United States
money.

For fine stock this estate of San Juan is one of the best
in the republic. It is devoted rather to breeding than to
raising beef, and many of the animals born here are
shipped to the other estancias of the owner to improve the
stock. Some of the Pereyra farms are composed entirely
of alfalfa fields. There is one used for stock raising which
has twenty-seven square miles of alfalfa.

None of the beef here is corn fed, and until lately most
of the cattle were raised on native grasses. Now they are
brought up on grass and fattened on alfalfa. The latter
crop is sown by the tens of thousands of acres. There are
single fields of alfalfa of more than one thousand acres,
and I know men who have ten and twenty thousand acres
in single tracts. Coming to Buenos Aires from the foot-
hills of the Andes, I rode through a stretch of country
which a few years ago was regarded as desert.

Some Italian wheat farmers from the East moved out
and broke ground for grain, but the soil was found to be so
light that it could not be farmed. Then alfalfa was tried;

219

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

its deep roots went down to the water, and now that region
is one of the best alfalfa lands on the globe.

The cattle of Argentina feed out of doors all the year
round. When the stock is taken off the native grasses
and put on alfalfa to fatten, it is turned into a great fenced
inclosure and allowed to feed at an alfalfa stack as our
cattle are fed upon straw. In this way a large number
can be cared for by few men. The cost of stock farming
is reduced to the minimum, for the cattle feed in those
great fields without need of barns or sheds and the winters
are so mild that there is plenty of grass the year round.

The Argentine stockmen realize the value of alfalfa in
making beef and have enormously increased its acreage.
As soon as the land is in that grass it rises in value.
Steers raised on it can be marketed a year younger than
if grown on the native grasses, while its use doubles
the carrying capacity of the estancia. In southern Cér-
doba and Sante Fe three thousand cattle are fed all
the year round to every square league of alfalfa. It is
said that another thousand head could be added if all were
breeding cattle. Since finely bred stock does not thrive
on the native grasses, there are many millions of acres in
Argentina that will have to be put into alfalfa to yield
full value. Lands which have been carrying three thou-
sand sheep to the league—that is, one sheep to two acres—
can now carry double the number. It is estimated that
one animal feeding on native grass requires as much as
eight acres. Moreover, alfalfa keeps on producing hay
year after year, for fattening or for piecing out the other
crops in case of a drought. Grown for hay, it gives
. one hundred per cent. profit. It is easy to raise and en-
riches the land, each ton of hay containing fifty pounds of

220

A DAY ON AN ESTANCIA

nitrogen. Three or four crops of dry fodder may be grown
a year, with a yield of seven or eight tons of hay to the
acre. The alfalfa farmers are the best stock farmers and
nearly all who have gone into the business have made
money. Much of the wheat land, after being used for a
short time, is now turned to alfalfa, for upon this crop the
great meat supply of the future depends.

Besides the pedigreed animals used for improving the
stock on the San Juan farm there are those sold at the
stock shows. The Pereyra herd acquired a great reputa-
tion when it produced Americus. He was the son of
Centennial Victor and Ravenswood III, and had a pedi-
gree running back to the fifteenth generation, his fifteenth
great-grandfather being named Julius Czsar. Since his
day the Pereyra herd is often the leader at the shows.

There is great rivalry among the breeders, and the
stock show in the suburbs of Buenos Aires is a national
event. The Argentineans are so keen to secure the
coveted blue ribbons that they will trust none of their
countrymen to act as judges at these shows. The judges
come from England and are recognized authorities. They
are guests of the Argentine Agricultural Society during
their stay. Their travelling expenses are paid, as well as
their living expenses for three weeks at the best hotels in
the city.

At the shows it is not uncommon to have a thousand
cattle and as many sheep on exhibit. A stock sale brings
in occasionally as much as one million dollars, while
net sales of half a million are common. The pedigrees of
the famous bulls are known everywhere and each man
keeps his stock book and stock register. At the sales the
most popular cattle are the Shorthorns, with next to them

221

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

the Herefords, while Durhams have been much used fof
crossing with native stock. On one four-year period
Argentina imported three thousand fine bulls from Eng-
land at a cost of three million dollars.

Importations of foreign stock are rapidly raising the
standard of Argentine beef. A generation ago fifty per
cent. of the cattle here were native bred of the class known
as Criollas, the offspring of the Spanish stock, which was
determined by inbreeding. Only about eight per cent.
of the stock is now native bred.

Indeed, the Argentine cattle industry has come a long
way since those early days when the greater part of the
stock ran wild and was killed merely for hides and tallow.
It is related that more than a hundred years before our
Declaration of Independence was signed, a traveller found
at Buenos Aires twenty-two Dutch and English vessels
laden with bulls’ hides. Each had aboard fifteen or six-
teen thousand hides, and in all three hundred thousand
cattle had been slaughtered to procure the hides shipped
by that fleet. These hides netted the exporters about
one dollar each, while the ships’ owners made a profit of
some six hundred per cent.

It is even said that the cattle increased so fast that they
would have devastated the country had it not been for the
wild dogs which devoured the calves. A priest, writing
of the abundance of the cattle, said the country was so
covered with them that any one could take all he wanted
up to ten or twelve thousand head. If he needed more than
that he had only to get a license from the government.
In the middle of the eighteenth century it was estimated
that the Argentine had forty-eight million cattle, which
were still killed chiefly for their hides. The animals were

222

San Juan is one of the most beautiful estates in Argentina, the land of
millionaire farmers. Some of its thousands of acres have avenues of
magnificent trees and streams and lakes set in forests.

For cattle raising it is customary to divide the land into wire-fenced
grazing fields of one hundred acres or so, while trees are planted liberally
not only for the owner’s pleasure, but to provide shade for the animals.

A DAY ON AN ESTANCIA

then worth a dollar a head; though in times of drought
the price rose to two dollars! In addition to the hides the
tallow was sold; but it was not until early in the nineteenth
century that beef was cut away from the bones and salted
and sun-dried as jerked beef.

To-day there are thirty-five million cattle in Argentina,
or almost half as many as we have in the United States.
Argentina is surpassed in the number of her cattle only by
India, the United States, and Brazil. But it is probable
that she will take second place, and that in no dis-
tant future. It is estimated that she has about five
hundred million acres of good land. Taking out half
to be used for grain raising, diversified farming, and town
sites, there would remain a quarter of a billion acres.
Properly handled, this would easily support one hundred
and fifty million cattle, or more than five times as many
as are now raised. This estimate is not at all extravagant
considering the undeveloped resources of the republic,
and with intensive cultivation the number might be fur-
ther increased, especially on the lands producing alfalfa.

223

CHAPTER XAX

BEEF AND BUTTER FOR OUR MARKETS

O YOU want a tenderloin steak from south of the
Equator? You can buy one any day in our
great city markets. Every few days steamship
loads of beef put off from Buenos Aires for

New York. Frigorificos for killing and freezing cattle
and sheep are growing in number, and large American
companies are engaged in the business. The Armours
have a plant at Buenos Aires, which is killing half a
million beeves a year, and another at La Plata of about
equal capacity. The Swifts have an establishment at
La Plata covering twenty-two acres. Moreover, there
are other companies, owned by English and Argentineans,
which are shipping meat to the United States and to
Europe.

During my stay in Buenos Aires I have seen single
vessels start for New York with thirty thousand quarters
of beef in their cold-storage chambers. That meat will
be twenty-odd days on the ocean, but when it arrives in
New York it will look as fresh and taste as sweet as any
that comes from Chicago. The purchasers will not know
the difference and it will cost somewhat less. Our Chi-
cago beef is often held in cold storage a fortnight before
starting to the markets, and may be two weeks in cold-
storage cars on the way. Then comes the wholesaler,
who may hold it for a week longer, then the icebox of the

224

BEEF AND BUTTER FOR OUR MARKETS

retailer, and finally the consumer. Provided that the re-
frigeration is perfect, this does not hurt the meat. Indeed,
many think it is the better for keeping. Some of our
best hotels prefer beef forty days old and have aging rooms
where whole quarters are kept at a low temperature for a
week or more. Large restaurants often keep their best
loin and rib roasts from thirty-five to forty days before
they are served.

But let us visit some of the big meat-freezing factories
of Buenos Aires. The Frigorifico La Blanca, owned by
the Armours, is nominally an Argentine institution,
managed independently of any of the great packing
establishments of the United States. The management
and methods of working are practically the same as those
of our Western packing houses.

On our way to the plant we passed the great docks of
Buenos Aires, and ferried across the River Riachuelo to a
group of great two-story buildings made of reinforced
concrete and roofed with galvanized iron. Before entering
them, we put on white cotton coats to protect our clothes.
We started in at the cattle pens, which are all under
cover and which must have an area of at least six
acres. I have never seen better steers outside our
stock shows. Most of the animals were Shorthorns and
Herefords, and I was told that their average weight
on the hoof was more than thirteen hundred pounds.
They had small heads, short necks, and the wide,
smooth, fat backs and great flanks that mean good
beef. An additional hundred pounds’ average weight
of steers means much in profits to an estanciero who
sells tens of thousands of head a year. Cattle mature
more quickly here than in the United States. Those

225

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

I saw awaiting slaughter were from three to five years
old.

I passed through room after room, watching all the
processes of turning the live stock into beef. As the
cattle pass through a swimming box on their way to the
killing room they receive a shower bath. They are
killed by being knocked on the head at the rate of two per
minute; and the carcasses are then cleaned and cut up in
the same way as in our beef-packing plants. The work is
all done under careful government inspection. The
veterinaries examine the stock before it reaches the killing
rooms and as soon as an animal is killed it is again tested
to see that it has no disease. Then a piece of the meat is
cut off, labelled, and sent to the laboratory to be further
examined. Every quarter of beef has to bear the govern-
ment stamp showing that it is fit for human consumption,
and the sanitary arrangements are fully equal to those of
the United States.

After being killed and dressed, the beeves go into cool-
ing chambers, where the temperature is about thirty
degrees Fahrenheit. They are hung up in halves, each
weighing about five hundred pounds. As I stood in the
cold rooms I could look down the long lines of pink-and-
white beef. The walls were white and the floors covered
with sawdust, and the combination of white-and-red flesh
was beautiful under the electric lights.

‘I next entered the freezing rooms, where they were
preparing the tongues, hearts, tripe, and liver for export.
I picked up one of the tongues. It was frozen stiff, as
cold as ice, and hardasa bone. I picked up a frozen ox-
tail which had a knob on one end as big as my fist and
reminded me of an Irish shillalah. I struck the board

226

In riding over the pampas one misses the farmhouses and farms of our
prairie landscapes. Sometimes for hours there are only leagues of grass
unbroken except for occasional herds of cattle or their corrals.

The Argentinians realize the value of alfalfa in making beef. Steers
raised on it can be marketed a year younger than if fattened on native
grasses, while its use doubles the carrying capacity of an estancia.

“T have seen single vessels start from Buenos Aires to New York with
thirty thousand white-shrouded quarters of beef in their cold-storage cham-
bers. When that meat arrives it will taste as sweet as any from Chicago,”

BEEF AND BUTTER FOR OUR MARKETS

floor of a truck with it and the wood cracked. I was
shown also frozen tripe intended for the United States.
It looked like a great white coral, or sponge.

Later on, I saw a ten-thousand-ton steamer taking on
beef for the States. It carried enough to give a pound to
every man, woman, and child in New York, and leave an
equal allowance for every citizen of Philadelphia.

The beef is shipped in quarters, clad in white cotton
shrouds. By means of trolley conveyors the quarters
pass from the factory right into the hold of the steamer.
Frozen mutton is loaded in much the same way.

The Argentine plants are as careful as ours in saving the
by-products. Every part of the animal is used for some-
thing. The hides are dressed and cleaned, salted and
dried, and shipped to Europe or to the United States.
The bones are cut up for knife handles and similar articles,
and the offal is made into fertilizers, which are largely
exported. A great deal of meat is canned, and soups are
prepared from the scraps.

Of the twenty-eight hundred workers in the La Plata
plant three hundred are Argentine girls. They are young
and quite attractive in their uniforms of caps and aprons
furnished by the company. With the single exception of
the butchers, the men employed are Italians and Span-
iards. The butchers are the native Argentine gauchos
or cowboys.

Argentina has some items of meat export that we do
not find in our government statistics, such as jerked beef
and powdered meat. It is an interesting bit of history
that in 1602 Philip III of Spain issued a cédula authoriz-
ing the export of meat from Buenos Aires, under which
edict jerked beef was at first the only kind of meat sent

227

THE TAIL OF THE*HENISERERE

out, chiefly to Havana. From the middle of the nine-
teenth century the export value of chilled beef was small,
but since 1900 it has grown till a fifty-million-dollar export
might be considered normal.

The oldest meat-freezing plant is the Sansinena, es-
tablished in 1883, which has paid ten per cent. and more
on its common stock. There are many others besides the
American companies, and while the English are said to
be very jealous of the Americans, accusing them of raising
the prices of cattle and thus reducing profits, there seems
to be abundant business for all.

I find much jealousy in Buenos Aires over the advances
our American firms are making in the packing-house busi-
ness. Some years ago all the killing, freezing, and ship-
ping was in the hands of the Argentineans and British.
Now the bulk of the shipments are sent out by the Ameri-
can frigorificos, which are steadily increasing in capacity.

American packers here have been shipping more meat
to Europe than to the United States, while the Argentine
and British packing firms send also to our markets. All
of the frzgorificos look upon us as one of their chief custom-
ers of the future. They realize how our meat supply is
decreasing, for statements are published showing how our
exports have dropped until we have now less meat than we
need. Knowing that our cattle are fewer in number than
before, they believe that Argentina must come in to supply
the deficit. There are several reasons why we are likely
to remain a meat-buying country. Our large ranches
have been divided into smaller holdings and more land
is given to dairy and grain farming. Hence our beef pro-
duction does not keep pace with increasing population.
We have also a wasteful habit of killing off calves to

228

BEEF AND BUTTER FOR OUR MARKETS

supply the demand for veal. The average weight of a
yearling is seventy pounds, perhaps, while a two-year-old
will weigh six hundred pounds. The United States has
frequently killed eight million calves a year, yielding
over five hundred million pounds of veal, which if left to
mature would have become almost five billion pounds of
beef. Another great source of waste lies in our lavish
use of meats. At most public places a guest is served with
a great deal more than he needs.

Not so many years ago the dairy industries hardly
existed in Argentina. Even now it is not uncommon to
find an estanciero, owning tens of thousands of cows, using
canned milk for his coffee. Butter was for years practi-
cally unknown on estates that owned more cows than
Job ever dreamed of possessing. To-day, more than four
hundred thousand quarts of milk are brought into Buenos
Aires every morning, and the annual export of cheese is
about twenty millions of pounds, the total production for
a year being about fifty million pounds.

] have been to see with my own eyes the world’s biggest
butter farm, La Martona, which supplies most of the
butter and milk for Buenos Aires, besides sending its
products to all of the other Argentine provinces and the
neighbouring countries.

This great farm was established by Vicente Casares.
The dairy is managed like a great American factory with
experts in charge of the plant, and the work goes on with
the best machinery imported from all parts of the world.
The ploughing is done with American steam ploughs, the
sterilizing machinery comes from Europe, and the patterns
of the churns are from far-off Australia. The butter fat
is tested by an American device, while the milk is pas-

220

FHESTAILD OF THE HEMISEHERE

teurized upon the basis of conclusions reached by the great
scientist of France.

I spent a whole morning in going through the dairy and
over the farm. My conductor was an Italian expert.
He could not speak English, and my Italian and Spanish
are lame, like my French. But with all three languages
we managed to understand each other. I went through
the rooms filled with shining machinery and immaculately
clean.

Later we took a look at the cows, driving through field
after field where hundreds were grazing. The farm is
divided into camps and stations; each station has a house
for the manager, near which is its milking corral. The
cows are driven in every morning and are milked once a
day only in the wire-fenced corral, which covers perhaps
half an acre. About one hundred cows are milked at
each station. A strap is tied around the hind legs and
tail of each animal to keep it still and to prevent dirt from
getting into the milk. The milking stations are so numer-
ous and scattered over so great an area that five hundred
horses are required to collect the milk and distribute the
empty cans. The cans are hauled in carts driven by
gauchos, and are sterilized by super-heated steam after
each milking.

I watched the milk poured into the centrifugals in which
it is cleaned. Each of these machines holds one hundred
gallons. After the milk goes through them at different
temperatures, it passes through a pasteurization plant.
I saw great separators out of which the skimmed milk was
pouring in a steady stream through one pipe, while the
rich yellow cream was flowing out through another. I
watched the churns, each of which will turn out five

230

Distances are so great on La Martona, the world’s biggest butter farm,
that several milking places like this must be scattered over the estancia.
It not only supplies Buenas Aires, but exports dairy products.

Seen AN
ae

en

La Martona dairy is managed by experts and equipped with the finest
machinery. But over Argentine roads deliveries from farm to factory
must be made by the big-wheeled cart rather than the imported motor
truck.

The gaucho is the horse and cattle man of the Pampas, living in the sad-
dle and scorning sheep herding and farm labor. Like our Western cowboys,

he is losing his picturesqueness, except in the movies where he is a popular
favourite.

BEERCANDSBUTI ER) FOR OUR MARKETS

hundred pounds of butter an hour, and then looked at the
machines where the butter is rolled over and over and
pressed again and again until all the milk is worked out of
it and it becomes solid fat. In this process no salt is used,
as all the butter is sold unsalted.

Afterward I saw the milk for the city being put up in
bottles. In another department milk was being bottled
for the steamers which leave Buenos Aires every day.
This was in pint bottles capped with tin, like beer bottles,
the milk being so treated that it will keep many days. In
a third room they were making an Argentine sweet or
conserve of milk and sugar which is very popular. This is
called dulce de leche. \tisa kind of milk marmalade which
is eaten with a spoon. It is sold in cans, the smallest of
which holds only a half-dozen spoonfuls, and the larger
cans about half a pint. The Argentineans like it somuch
that they often send cans of it to Europe as a special
treat for their friends. The ingredients are only pure
milk and sugar, which are put into great copper kettles
and cooked by steam for twelve hours.

Compared to our production, Argentina’s cheese and
butter output is still small. Our dairies produce nearly
eight hundred million pounds of butter a year and over
six million pounds of cheese. But it must be remembered
that in such things we are an old country while the
Argentine is practically new. Moreover, we have more
than one hundred and ten million people and the Argentine
iess than nine millions. But this country is advancing
more rapidly than we are in such fields, and already she
has begun to ship us butter at the rate of four million
pounds a year.

231

CHARTERS GX!
MAINLY ABOUT HORSES

RGENTINA is noted as paying the highest
prices for fine blooded stock in horses as well
as cattle. Diamond Jubilee, which once be-
longed to King Edward of England, was sold

to the Argentineans for over one hundred and fifty thou-
sand dollars. This horse was later sold again for a still
larger sum. Another famous horse came from France and
cost sixty thousand dollars. One noted animal brought
from England was purchased for nineteen thousand
pounds, or ninety-five thousand dollars. He was kept
for some time in Argentina and then sent to the United
States at a price of more than one hundred thousand
dollars. Some of the fine stallions from England have
been returned home at increased figures. There have
been many mares imported at extraordinary prices.

Every spring there is a sale of thoroughbred stock which
brings in more than a million and a half of dollars for the
colts sold. Sometimes the total runs as high as two
million dollars. The average price of yearlings at these
sales has steadily risen. In 1903 it was six hundred
dollars, and since then it has reached three thousand four
hundred and fifty dollars per colt.

These high-priced throughbreds, kept mainly for racing
and breeding purposes, are scattered all over the country,
greatly to the improvement of the native stock. Racing

232

MAINLY ABOUT HORSES

is the national sport. In fact, the Argentinean of every
class is invariably more interested in the turf than is the
North American in the baseball diamond. More than
nine thousand horses have been run in a single year,
competing in over a thousand races. Three hundred and
fifty thousand dollars is often handled at a single meet-
ing. No race is run for less than one thousand dollars,
while some of the races have purses of from five to twenty
thousand dollars. In one year a single stable won more
than two hundred thousand dollars in purses, and the
total stakes were over a million dollars.

I wish I could take you to the Hippodrome near Palermo
Park to show you the races. They are held on Sundays
and Thursdays, and on all holidays. Everyone goes.
In the grandstand one may see the president and his
cabinet, the chief officers of the army and navy, and all
the world and his wife besides. The race track is two
miles in length and has an inner track for training pur-
poses. The grandstand will seat many thousands. I was
told there were about twenty thousand there the day |
attended and that these people paid entrance fees all the
way from one to seven dollars. The races are managed
by the Jockey Club, which owns the track and gets ten
per cent. of the receipts, which amount to several mil-
lion dollars a year. A large part of this sum is given to
charity but enough is left to make the Jockey Club the
richest association of its kind in the world.

The betting is on the pari-mutuel order, the tickets
costing about one dollar in gold. They can be bought in
lots of from one to one hundred or more, and there is
straight betting and place betting on every race. Rivers
of men and women flow to and from the windows of the

233

THETA OF FHESHEMISERERE

betting booths. It seemed to me that everyone was
putting up some money on every race. All were wildly
excited, and as the horses neared the winning post, twenty
thousand people rose with a yell. The crowd was well
dressed, but there were more poor than rich, among them
many Italians and Spaniards and thousands of native
Argentineans.

The Jockey Club of Buenos Aires, founded many years
ago, has steadily increased in popularity until it now
numbers more than two thousand members, although its
initiation fee is fifteen hundred dollars. The annual dues
are ninety dollars. The club is not a money-making
institution as far as the members are concerned. Its
enormous receipts go back into furnishings and charities
and to increasing the interest in horses and racing. Vast
amounts have been spent on the club properties, the race
track and buildings having cost over one million dollars.

The Jockey Club House is one of the handsomest build-
ings of the city. I have had the good fortune to dine there
in company with our Ambassador. We sat about a round
table in a small but splendid dining room, finer, I venture
to say, than that of any palace in Europe. Later we
looked into the state dining room which was one of the
most beautiful in the world. The walls were covered
with costly tapestries and carvings, and the rooms were
decorated by famous artists. The club was a treasure-
house from one end to the other. There was a celebrated
statue of Diana by Falguiére, while upon the walls were
paintings by such artists as Bonnat, Bouguereau, and
Roybet. The stairway to the second floor had marble
steps and balustrades of onyx.

Notwithstanding the beauties of this clubhouse, the

234

MAINLY ABOUT HORSES

members decided to give it over to the Argentine govern-
ment for the use of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
have built a new clubhouse on the Calle San Martin not
far from the Hotel Plaza. The site alone cost three
million five hundred thousand dollars.

But the sporting spirit is not confined to the city
dweller nor to men of means. Out in the campo, or
country districts, the gauchos have races every Sunday
and holiday. It is a passion with them, not a business.
They nde fifteen or twenty miles to the meets, prancing
in and shouting challenges as they come. The women
drive in the carts and make fires among the bushes to
prepare food and coffee for their husbands. The excite-
ment is tremendous, the rivalry intense. They shout and
gesticulate, cry up the merits of their animals, and ride
like centaurs—all to win or lose a trifling sum of less than
a dollar.

The origin of the Argentine horse is of especial interest
to us. Our hemisphere had no horses until after Colum-
bus came and the first horses of both North and South
America were imported from Spain. They were de-
scended from those produced by the Moors from a cross
between the Barb and the Arabian. Some were sent to
Mexico, where they ran wild, and we found their de-
scendants in the wild horses of our Western plains. Others
were brought to South America in the sixteenth century.
Some of these belonged to Pedro de Mendoza, who had to
abandon his settlement on the pampas when attacked by
the Querrandi Indians. He left behind him five mares and
seven stallions, and it is said that these twelve animals
were the progenitors of the great troops of Argentine
horses. They increased in such numbers that the wild

235

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

droves almost covered the plains. There were so many
horses that at one time mares and geldings were sold to
the government for two or three shillings each to supply
the Indians with horse flesh. Later tens of thousands
were killed for their hides and tallow, bringing from
fifteen to twenty shillings a head.

It was not until rather late in the nineteenth century
that horses became worth fifty dollars or more apiece.
The early Argentineans were too proud to ride mares and
during the first quarter of the nineteenth century more
than a half million were butchered for what they would
bring in hair, fat, and hides. Now the mare is almost as
valuable as the stallion and horse breeding is exceedingly
profitable. The Criolla mare, which served as the base
for the native horse stock, to-day shows some evidences of
its Arabian ancestry. It was dwarfed by being born and
bred in the open without other food than the native
grasses. It is irregular in shape and colour, ranging from
the slender type to the short and stocky one.

The native horses are excellent for breeding, although
crossing them with racing blood seems to take away their
muscular strength and sturdiness and make them nervous.
For working cattle, the lassoers on horseback need brawny,
steady mounts. Crossed with the Percheron, Clydesdale,
or Shire, the Criolla is a good general animal, fitted for
draft or the carriage; while, crossed with the thoroughbred,
it is especially fitted for cavalry use.

In riding over the country one sees large droves of
horses and there is a regular importation of all kinds of
fine animals. The number is steadily increasing, yet it is
estimated that there is still room for many times the
supply now on hand.

236

MAINLY ABOUT HORSES

I have been interested in the methods of horse-breaking
here. On the great stud farms, where fine stock is kept,
the methods are much the same as in the United States,
but out on the pampas, where the gauchos do as they
please, the horses are allowed to run free until they are
four or five years old. They are then lassoed and saddled
by force. The gaucho mounts the horse and gallops him
under a shower of blows until he is conquered, in much
the same way as did our cowboys of the Far West.

The Argentine cowboy, or the native horseman and
cattleman of the pampas, is of mixed Spanish and Indian
blood. The Indian seems to predominate without con-
cealing the Spanish. The gaucho is at home upon horse-
back, and is always ready to ride over the plains and
watch or drive cattle. He does not like to take care of
sheep, and considers farm labour beneath him. He
looks much like an American Indian, though his cheek-
bones are not so high and his complexion is lighter. His
eyes are coal-black, and he usually has a full, black, heavy
beard and straight black hair. He ordinarily wears a
felt hat and a blanket poncho with stripes, which is
draped over his shoulder.

The homes of the gauchos are scattered over the pampas.
They are often rude huts with doors so low that one must
stoop to enter them. The floor is of earth and the
furniture is a bed, a table, and one or two seats, the
latter often being the skulls of bullocks. Their chief
food is meat cooked over the coals and basted with
the juice as it cooks. One of the favourite dishes 1s
carne con cuero, which means ‘‘meat cooked in the skin.”
The meat is wrapped up tightly in the hide of the animal
from which it comes. The skin keeps in the juices and

237

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

the result is delicious. The gaucho drinks maté usually
whenever he can get it, but always the first thing in the
morning. As maté is both a stimulant and a food, it
enables him to go for a long time without other nourish-
ment.

Every gaucho carries a knife a foot long, which is used
indifferently for eating or fighting. In olden times it was
customary for two gauchos with a dispute to settle to
fight with their left legs tied together, each man kneeling
upon the right knee and facing the other. Over one arm
of each combatant was a blanket poncho, used as a guard,
and in the other was his knife. At the drop of a handker-
chief the two began to stab at each other, continuing
until one was mortally wounded. To-day, as the country
grows more and more settled, the typical gaucho is dis-
appearing, and becoming a figure of the past or the movies,
like our “wild Westerner.” yi:

At the spring sale of blooded colts the receipts sometimes amount to
more than two million dollars. Distribution of this fine stock among the
estancias does much for the improvement of the native breeds.

At one time great droves of wild horses, descendants of a few brought
from Spain, overran the pampas and were valued only for their hides and
tallow. To-day the horse is king, and breeding him a profitable industry.

The Parana, which fattens the wheat lands for which Rosario is the
shipping centre, comes down from the north, through tropical vegetation
where only the shrieks of brilliantly coloured parrots disturb the silence.

CHAPTER XXXII
WHEAT LANDS OF THE PARANA

HE bread lands of the Argentine are in the
basin of the Parana River. The heart of this
district is the port of Rosario, situated on the
river about two hundred miles from Buenos
Aires. Ocean steamers sail for two hundred miles up the
Rio de la Plata into the mouth of the Parana, thence
winding about for three hundred miles to Rosario. The
channel is so deep that great ships of twenty-four feet
draft can reach Rosario at any time of the year, and they
come from all parts of Europe and from the United States
for cargoes of grain.
_ Great elevators have sprung up along the banks of the
river, and the city has facilities for loading about two
hundred thousand bushels a day. There is one elevator
that takes in five hundred tons of grain an hour, and an-
other that fills the hold of a four-thousand-ton vessel in less
than five hours. The biggest elevator is seven stories high,
with sixty silos on either side. The port borders the banks
of the Parana River for two miles and the wharves are
about a mile long. Under the wharves are warehouses
which will hold ten million bushels of wheat, while on the
high banks of the river, thirty feet and more above the
water, there are other warehouses from which chutes
carry the grain down into the steamers.
The city of Rosario stands on a bluff so steep that the

239

HEAL OFS LHe EV ISR Rs

grain can be loaded by gravity. The wheat is brought
here in bags, and the cars carry it to the edge of the bluff.
There the bags are thrown into the chutes by Italian
labourers at the rate of forty or fifty a minute. They
make one think of racing white mice, recalling the army
of ten thousand rats that attacked and ate up Archbishop
Hatto in his castle on the Rhine.

But the chutes are giving way to long pipes and the
wheat is being delivered in bulk. A single elevator will
have twenty or more such pipes, and a half-dozen ships
can be loaded at once. The elevators are steadily in-
creasing in number and size. Many have been built
at Buenos Aires. There are also big ones at Bahia Blanca,
on the coast, about ten hours south of Buenos Aires.
The government has required the railroads to build
warehouses for grain throughout the country, so that the
Argentine will soon have a wheat-handling system of ele-
vators like those of Canada and the United States.

The most-needed aid to profitable wheat growing is
improved roads so that motor trucks may be used in
place of the slow and clumsy carts. The first cost of these
improvements would be enormous, but in the end they
would prove a paying investment. The cost of hauling
grain is almost prohibitive for farmers remote from a
railroad or river.

Rosario is the Chicago of the Argentine Republic. It
is the second largest city of the country and one of the
richest of South America. It has more than two hundred
thousand people and is growing fast. Standing in the
midst of the wheat lands in the heart of the Paran4 basin,
the town is the centre of tens of millions of acres of good
farming country. It is the head of navigation for the

240

WHEAT LANDS OF THE PARANA

river valley, and grain can be brought here on the Paran4
and its tributaries from an area covering thousands of
Square miles.

The wheat lands of the Parana basin were made by the
earth washed from the Andes. These plains cover
hundreds of millions of acres, which have produced two
hundred million bushels of wheat in one year. About
Rosario and in other parts of the valley the soil is a rich
black loam from six to three feet deep, lying on a clay
bed. Although about eighteen million acres are in wheat,
the yield per acre is much less than it should be, owing to
the careless farming. In Great Britain the average yield
is thirty-one bushels to the acre; in Argentina it is only
eleven bushels.

- And yet it is safe to say that not one twentieth of the
grain area has been developed. Those wide plains across
which I rode from the Andes to the Atlantic hold possi-
bilities of cultivation almost as boundless as their extent.
A vast productive region lies northwest of Buenos Aires.
Twenty-four hours’ ride on a fast express brings one to
Tucuman, where the country is much like our Southern
states. Or, one can start at Buenos Aires and go south,
riding through pastures and corn fields and wheat fields for
a whole day. Or he can go directly north, and, crossing
the Rio de la Plata, come into the Argentine Mesopotamia,
Entre Rios, which lies between the Uruguay and Para-
guay rivers. The whole country will produce wheat,
and, intensively cultivated, could almost feed the globe.

Scientific wheat farming is done only on certain large
estates managed by the English and Argentineans. Most
of the grain lands are in the hands of the Italians, many of
whom farm on shares, doing their work in the most

241

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

slovenly way. A great deal of grain is sown broadcast
upon ground which is only half ploughed, the wheat being
merely dropped upon the clods. Some of the farmers
drag bushes over the fields and others use harrows. On
the small farms the ploughing is done with bullocks drag-
ging ploughs through the furrows by a yoke attached to
the horns. Few fertilizers are employed, and the only idea
of the Italian seems to be to get the wheat into the ground,
after which he sits down and waits for nature to give him
the crop. But the Argentine government is fully awake to
the need of modern methods, and nowhere in the world is
there an agricultural department more energetic in carry-
ing knowledge to the people through regional schools,
travelling lecturers, codperative experiments, and every
kind of encouragement to scientific production.

Ploughing can be done at any time of the year, though
the land is usually broken in February, March, or April.
To get the best results there should be a second deep
ploughing and the soil should be well harrowed before the
wheat is sown. The average sowing is about a bushel of
grain to the acre. The seeding time is May fifteenth for
the central part of the country and later and later as one
goes south. In Patagonia the seed is often put in during
June or July, and sometimes as late as August. The
crop grows so rapidly that about the middle of November
or December it is ready to harvest. Four fifths of all the

“wheat of Argentina is cut and threshed in December,
although in the south the harvesting season may continue
until the end of January.

With the small wheat farmer, the size of the family
gauges the profit. When planting and harvesting are
going on the whole family works. The women go into the

242

_- In parts of southern Argentina, where the winds have full sweep over
treeless plains, tamarisk hedges are set out for the protection of vineyards
and orchards.

The richness of the soil makes for careless rather than intensive farming,
so that the average wheat yield is only eleven bushels per acre as compared
with over thirty bushels in England, France, and Belgium.

The Argentine Republic is the third largest exporter of wheat in the
world, outranked only by the United States and Canada. This is one of
the grain docks of Bahia Blanca, the commercial centre of the south.

WHEAT LANDS OF THE PARANA

fields and plough and reap, and boys of eight and girls of
nine or ten do their share of the labour. The work goes on
from sunrise to sunset, and on a moonlight night one may
see them binding and reaping out under the stars. It is
the same at planting time. Between seasons there is one
long vacation when the people do nothing but loaf, living
upon credit or the profits of the last crop. Drought or
crop failure from any cause means increase of their debts,
while a plague of locusts may bring ruin and famine.
Gradually the campaign of public education will change
all this. There is no need for a dependence on one crop,
for the land is capable of growing a variety of things, so the
farmer could raise about everything he uses. Since plough-
ing can be done every month in the year, a succession of
products, with proper fertilizing and intelligent rotation
of crops, would improve the land as well as insure some-
thing to the farmer, no matter what happened to his wheat.

243

CHAPTER XXXII
THE TERRIBLE LOCUST

HE locust is the terror of the Argentine farmer.

It afflicts him even as it afflicted Pharaoh when

he hardened his heart and would not let the

Israelites go at the command of Moses. The
chief difference is that Pharaoh had the plague for only a
season, while the Argentineans have often to suffer for
several years in succession.

The locusts that spread over Egypt sailed in on an east
wind. Those that cover Argentina fly down from the
north, and like their sisters of Egypt, they come in such
swarms that they cover the face of the sun and darkness
falls on the land. They eat all the vegetation and when
they depart ‘“‘there remains not any green thing in the
trees or in the herbs of the field” throughout all the land
that they cover. I talked with one entomological expert
who went to Argentina from the United States and has
made an exhaustive study of this pestiferous grasshopper.
He says thatthe Bible description of the plague is not
overdrawn. With the exception of the paradise tree, the
locusts destroy every green thing. They eat the crops
from the fields and chew up the grass. They clean the
fruit trees of their leaves and eat off the bark to the wood.
Orchards are to be seen where the oranges still hang on
the branches although not a leaf is left. The locusts will
go into acorn field and strip the leaves from the stalks, and
if the corn is small they may eat it down to the ground.

244

i Eee ROBIE: LOCUST

They hang to the branches of trees like bees when swarm-
ing and the boughs often break with their weight.

During a tour up the Rio de la Plata I saw fields that
had been devastated by locusts, and I heard from Dr. Hab-
nicht, one of a colony of Seventh-Day Adventists from
the United States, that the hoppers frequently strip large
trees of their bark, leaving nothing but the white skeletons.
Where they attack ripe fruit one may see the peach stones
still hanging and the bark of the tree completely taken
away. [hey mow the grass from the ground, and cut the
wheat in the fields so that the earth looks as though it
were burnt. In places they cover the ground to a depth of
two or three inches, hopping one over the other in their
fight for food.

' The size of the swarms varies. Sometimes they may
cover but a few acres, at others they may blacken the
land for many square miles. Railroad trains at times
pass for more than a hour through a cloud of locusts ex-
tending far out on both sides of the cars and almost two
hundred feet high. They are not in one solid mass, and
as they fly they look like a snowstorm, their transparent
wings catching the sun and having the appearance of
snowflakes. They usually stop over night. A swarm
about to settle down is tremendously thick, and may be
two thousand feet wide, fifty feet high, and a mile long.
It is so black that it looks like a stormcloud. After they
get their wings, the adult locusts usually fly high enough
not to affect the movement of the train, but while
they are still in the hopper stage, they may crawl in
bands over the tracks, and the cars crush them, making
the rails so greasy that the wheels will not take hold, but
fly round and round while the cars stand still. In such

245

THE TAIL.OF THE HEMISPHERE

cases two of the brakemen often sit on the cowcatcher,
holding brooms on the rails to brush off the pests as the
cars move. Sometimes they have to sand the rails.
The young, wingless locusts are more voracious than when
they are fully grown.

These insects are very much like our Peace but
about twice as large. Their general colour is grayish red
and they look like small birds as they fly through the air.
They are not dangerous to man but when they fly low and
hit one in the face it is annoying. The insects are prolific,
and a great part of the damage is caused not by the grown-
ups but by the babies. As they move over the country
the females bore holes in the ground with their tails and
lay eggs. Each female will lay a bag of from fifty to a
hundred eggs and a month or so later these will have
hatched out into young locusts which crawl out after a rain
and begin their devastating march. They crawl and hop
over the ground, consuming everything as they go. They
keep on crawling until their wings grow. They advance
in great hordes, climbing fences and entering the houses.
Dr. Habenicht told me that they ate the lace curtains
from his windows, and that they sometimes attack babies
and bite them until the blood runs. As soon as their
wings grow they fly away.

No one knows where the pests come from. Some say
they are from Brazil, some from Bolivia, some from
Paraguay and the Argentine Chaco. The Argentineans
know that they come from the north and northwest and
travel as far south as the provinces of Salta and Jujuy and
the territories of Formosa and Chaco. After a time there
are other swarms formed by the young hatched from eggs
left by the first hordes, and as the weather grows warmer

246

Typical of the lavish spending of the land barons is this outdoor theatre
on the estate of a wealthy estanciero near the capital. The walls, boxes,
and wings are formed of hedges. The stage is floored of concrete.

4

As with cattle and horses, the Argentinians have greatly improved the
native breed of sheep by importing blooded stock from Europe, until now
the weight of the average fleece has been increased more than a third.

THE TERRIBLE LOCUST

there are still other hosts until the whole territory is
overrun. August and September are the season for them.
When the weather begins to get colder they start north
again. Entomologists think that the only way to combat
the pests is by going to the country of their origin and
studying their life history there. It is fighting in the
dark to use only the feeble remedies possible after the
swarms descend upon the land.

Argentina has long had laws for the extermination of
locusts, and the government spends from one to five
million dollars a year for this purpose. They are attacked
in the swarms, in the egg, and when travelling as young
over the country. They are caught in bags and cloths
during the hours of low temperature and destroyed. The
places where they settle are fired, and where they have
laid their eggs the whole zone is often ploughed up. In
other places the eggs are dug up with picks, and if the
ground is wet animals are driven over the soil to destroy
them. In some sections the government pays fifteen or
twenty cents a sack, and a man may make fifteen dollars
a night catching locusts. It is not uncommon to have
five hundred wagonloads of sacked locusts brought to
one of the receiving stations in a single day. The sacking
is usually during the mating season, when they do not fly.

Another method of protecting the grain fields is to
surround them with little fences of tin or sheet-iron.
These fences may be eighteen inches or two feet in height,
but it is impossible for the young locusts to crawl over
them. They will come in battalions to a fence and
then travel along it in both directions. At every three
hundred feet holes about a yard deep are dug, and these
are so bordered with tin that the insects drop into the

247

‘SHE TAINS OP THESHEMISEHERE

holes and cannot get out. The agricultural department
has spent millions of dollars for such means of defence,
and has on hand enough of such barriers to reach half.
way around the world. There are also other locust traps,
In places the crawlers are scooped up with scrapers and
killed, and attempts have been made to destroy them with
solutions of kerosene, arsenic, and creosote.

Another insect pest is the ant. There is one species
that is not much bigger than the head of a large pin, but
it exists in such numbers that the damage Is enormous.
It attacks the sugar cane and cotton. It bites its way
into the oranges, and it crawls into the houses. It likes
to work in the dark, and no place is safe from its attack.
In some sections the bedposts rest in bowls of water or on
panes of glass coated with vaseline, and I am told that
mothers have been forced to take their babies from their
cradles and dip them in water to clean off the ants. The
little insects are so small that they get into the mouth and
nostrils, and there are reports of babies having been
killed by them. The Argentine ant has caused trouble in
the United States. These ants have been carried by ships
to our Gulf Coast, and for a time there were so many in
New Orleans that they became known as the New Orleans
ant. They are also found in southern California.

248

CHAPTER XXXIV
THE WORLD’S SECOND SHEEP COUNTRY

S A sheep country, Argentina has unrivalled possi-
bilities. Already she has more than eighty mil-
lion sheep, or about ten to each inhabitant, and
there is opportunity for still greater expansion.

The Mercado Central de Frutos of Buenos Aires is the
largest wool market of the world. In connection with
Bahia Blanca, the great port of southern Argentina, it
handles practically all of the wool grown in the republic.
The market is owned by a stock company, which has fre-
quently paid dividends of from thirteen to fifteen per cent.
There are acres of buildings. The main structure is of
brick, with a vast iron roof supported by thousands of
iron pillars. The Mercado Central, which | have visited,
is on the banks of the Riachuelo River, surrounded by a
network of railways so placed that freight can come in
by boat and car from different parts of the republic and go
out on ocean vessels to all parts of the world. Hundreds
of millions of pounds of hides, grain, skins, and wool are
handled here each year. |

At shearing time the wool comes in by trainloads and
shiploads. There are not enough cars to handle the clip,
and the vast market is so packed that you can hardly
get through it. Three floors are stacked high with bales
of dirty, greasy wool. The streets are jammed with carts
and wagons heaped with it. Much or the loading and

249

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

unloading is done with hydraulic cranes so that a great
part of the clip goes from the cars and ships direct to its
place in the market. Each man’s consignment is in a
pile by itself, in such form that the buyers can make easy
examination. The wool is sold unwashed. Fifty per
cent. of weight is said to be lost in the cleaning process,
and the exporters prefer that the wool cross the ocean in
an unwashed state. The clip contains so much grease
that when | thrust my hand into one of the bales it came
out shining, as though | had dipped it in vaseline, and I
had to put on a cotton coat to save my clothes from stains.

The Argentine wool clip is growing in value. The
quantity is not so great as in the past, but the quality is
improving, and the yield per sheep is increasing. Owing
to the improvement from importing fine stock, the average
fleece is now one third larger than in 1860.

Next to Australia, Argentina is the world’s largest sheep
producer, but in spite of the great demand for wool and
sheepskins and frozen mutton which was created by the
war and which still continues, the actual number of sheep
did not increase much. One reason is said to be the
amount of care required to raise sheep successfully, com-
pared with cattle raising or farming. In many places the
estancias have for years been carrying flocks as large as
they could profitably manage. The less settled provinces
have been producing more and the older sections less
wool than before the war. The world’s production of
wool and mutton just about balances the demand, and the
Argentine farmer is apt to rest content with the profit
of the day without making an intensive effort to increase
the possibilities of future gain. He does not, as a rule,
appreciate the fact that eternal vigilance is the price of

250

in, Bike ah 8H I

$

Bahia Blanca is destined to be one of the greatest ports of South
America; already its foreign trade amounts to tens of millions of dollars
a year, and its grain elevators and flour mills are the wonder of the con-

tinent.

Of her vast areas of public lands awaiting cultivation, Argentina
annually sells some thirty-five thousand square mies. Purchasers must
work their lands within two years in order to hold title.

THE WORLD’S SECOND SHEEP COUNTRY

profit. The Argentine wool is inferior in quality to that
grown in Australia and only by constant importation of
first-class stock can the quality and quantity be kept up
to a high standard. With Nature’s abundant gifts of
suitable grazing land and every possible advantage of
climate, the Argentineans should not fall behind in develop-
ing this great source of revenue.

In Buenos Aires province the sheep are kept in fenced
inclosures. In the south they are herded in flocks of
several thousand. No artificial feeding is done. Like
other live stock the sheep live out of doors from one
year’s end to another. There are no sheds, barns, or
stacks of hay in that region. The animals wander off
in the morning, grazing in the direction whence the wind
blows, and return in the evening to sleep about the huts
of the shepherds. It is only where the grass is plentiful
that the fields are fenced with wire. Since close grazing
betters the grasses, a farm is improved by the keeping of
sheep.

The herder may work for monthly wages or he may herd
on shares for one fourth of the profit. His life is dreary in
the extreme. His only home is a mud hut away out on the
prairie; his only companions are the sheep, his horse, and
his dogs. His chief food is mutton, as his employer allows
him to kill enough sheep to supply himself with meat.

The first sheep brought to Argentina came from the
West Indies. ‘They were descended from flocks brought
to Santo Domingo by Columbus and other navigators.
From that island they were taken to Jamaica, Cuba, and
Porto Rico, and thence made their way south to the Rio
de la Plata. In 1550 some were brought to Tucuman, in
northern Argentina, and later others were driven over

251

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

the Andes from Chile. The Chilean sheep, also, are said
to have originated from the Santo Domingo flocks, which
came not from Spain but from the Canary Islands. If
this be true, practically all of the sheep of Latin America
had their origin in the Canaries.

By inbreeding for hundreds of years the native sheep
became smaller, their wool grew hard and short, and they
looked like goats. It was not until other importations
were made that the flocks began to improve. An Ameri-
can consul named Halley, who represented us at Buenos
Aires at the beginning of the last century, did much to
introduce fine breeds into Argentina. But little attention
was paid to the importation of fine stock until about 1862.
After that Merinos were imported and a little later South-
downs and others. I saw on the San Juan estancia a
Southdown flock descended from rams and ewes imported
eighty years ago, about which same time Rambouillets
and Blackfaces were also introduced.

Only recently has mutton brought a good price in the
local markets. A generation ago sheep were so common
that the beggars refused to eat mutton, and the only
profit in sheep came from the wool. At an earlier time
sheep were killed in great numbers without taking the
trouble to shear them, the hides being allowed to rot so
that the wool could be more easily plucked off. The bodies
were then used as fuel for the brick kilns, and it is said
that there are old churches in Buenos Aires built of bricks
baked with sheep carcasses. At the beginning of the
nineteenth century the flocks were so numerous that sheep
were sometimes sold for six cents apiece, and at one time
they multiplied so rapidly that thousands of the older
ones were driven over the rocks into the sea to get rid of

252

THE WORLD’S SECOND SHEEP COUNTRY

them. At another period they were slaughtered for their
tallow, a single sheep bringing as much as one dollar for
its‘fat.

Before the white man came to South America, the
sources of wool were the llamas, alpacas, vicufias, and
guanacos. These animals lived only in the highlands of
the Andes. The vicufias and guanacos ran wild, as they
do now, and every year the Incas had a great hunt, during
which they killed thousands of them and dried the meat.
The wool was shorn and stored in the imperial depots.

Argentina was the first country to export frozen meat of
any kind to England. The first shipments were on account
of the foot-and-mouth disease, which led to embargoes to
keep the live cattle and sheep out of the United Kingdom.
It was not until 1885 that the industry was definitely
established. To-day the business done in frozen mutton
alone amounts to five or six million dollars a year. The
mutton and lamb are exported in whole carcasses, weigh-
ing from thirty to fifty pounds each, for the English prefer
the medium weights.

I have been through a packing house at Buenos Aires
which has a capacity of five thousand sheep a day. When
I entered the killing room the floor was covered with blood.
There were two thousand animals in the pens, and hundreds
had been skinned and cleaned and hung up to cool before
being put in the freezing rooms. | stopped for a moment
and timed the killing. Within just three minutes I sawa
sheep pass from its active bleating life into a carcass,
skinned and cleaned and ready to be frozen for its long
voyage of seven thousand miles over the ocean to Europe.
The killing was done in sight of the waiting victims, hun-
dreds of which looked on while their brothers and sisters

253

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

were slaughtered. Every pen had at least fifty sheep,
and along the front on a bench as high as my knee lay
rows of dying animals. Each had two great round holes
in its white throat out of which ran the red blood into a
little canal below. Some were kicking, others were feebly
groaning, but I could see that death was almost instantane-
ous. The killing is done with a long, double-bladed knife.
The sheep is caught by two men, who throw it on its
back upon a bench. While they hold it the butcher seizes
it by the chin, bends the head back, and with one thrust
drives the knife into its throat, cutting the jugular vein.
He goes on to the next, and keeps on killing like a veritable
machine, butchering them at the rate of one or more per
minute.

As soon as the sheep is killed it is disembowelled and
skinned. The cleaned entrails go to Germany for the
casings of sausages. The kidney fat is made into an
oleomargarine used here for cooking, and the kidneys
are sold in the markets of Buenos Aires. The tongues
are frozen; the feet and head are cut off. The carcass is
then dressed after the fashion most popular in England.
There are London market men here to superintend this
part of the work.

The freezing is done in great chambers each of which
will hold sixty thousand carcasses. These rooms have
double walls of wood a foot thick, and their ceilings are
covered with coils of pipes through which flow ammonia
and brine, lowering the temperature to thirty degrees
below zero. The coils were covered with frost an inch
thick, and as I stood at one end of the room I could see a
thousand freezing carcasses hanging from the hooks in
the ceiling. They were almost ready for shipment, and,

254

Sheep are often herded on the pampas in flocks of thousands. Many
of the largest owners are New Zealanders. who have done a great deal to
develop the industry in Argentina.

In the wool market each man’s consignment is placed by itself for the
buyers’ inspection. Most of the clip is sold unwashed and is so greasy that
the dealers all wear long cotton coats to protect their clothes.

THE WORLD’S SECOND SHEEP COUNTRY

when my guide lifted one to show it to me, | found that its
flesh was as hard as stone and that it would stand alone.
That carcass had been in the room forty-eight hours.

Before shipping, the dressed sheep is sewed up in fine
white muslin cloth. Then come the cold-storage cham-
bers of the steamers, where the temperature is almost as
low as that of the freezing rooms, and then the Liverpool
or London market.

255

CHAPTER XXXV
THE CONDOR AND THE OSTRICH

N THE mountain regions one of the enemies of the

sheep herder is the condor, the eagle of the Andes.

As these birds will attack any of the animals of the

high Andes, especially if it be sick or wounded, the
shepherds have to watch to keep them away from the
sheep.

I have seen the condors in the mountains. They fly
higher than any other bird. Their favourite breeding
places are two or three miles above the sea. They may
often be seen among the snows. I photographed a half
dozen in the zoo at Lima, Peru, and it seemed to me
that they were about the ugliest birds in the whole aviary.
Their heads and necks had no feathers, and they looked
like the gigantic vultures they are. The male condors
have combs of bright red and a frill of white feathers at
the base of their long, skinny necks. The rest of the
plumage is black. These birds are sometimes compared
with the eagle, but they are nothing like eagles in appear-
ance and habits. They eat carrion, and if a llama or an
alpaca lies dead in the mountains one may see them swoop-
ing down upon the carcass. When they find meat they
gorge themselves, and as they become stupid from over-
eating they are then easily caught and killed. The condor
is not seen on the pampas, although there are many vul-
tures of other kinds there and in other parts of Argentina.

256

THE CONDOR AND THE OSTRICH

Another pest of the pastoral districts is the caran-
cho, a comparatively small bird of a dark brown colour
with a light band across its wings. It makes me
think of a cross between a vulture and a hawk. It eats
only carrion, but will attack lambs and pick out their eyes.
I am reminded of the kea, the famous sheep-eating parrot
of New Zealand, which has a way of fastening its claws in
the wool and then tearing a hole into the live sheep to get
at the kidneys.

About the most interesting of the large birds of Ar-
gentina is the rhea, or South American ostrich. They are
found in great numbers running over the pampas and
there are thousands of them in Patagonia. I have seen
them from the car windows and have watched them
hunted in the desert, where they squat down and hide
their heads in the sand. As they are of the same gray
colour as the bushes and bunches of scrub all around
them, it takes a sharp eye to distinguish the birds from
the bush. The ostrich has always been laughed at
for this silly custom, but, indeed, there is nothing more
cunning, as it insures a degree of concealment that the
bird could have in no other way. When the rhea stands
up one can easily distinguish him, but when he squats
down, with his head out of sight, he seems merely a
bush.

In walking, the ostrich keeps its wings closed and swings
its neck backward and forward. In running, the wings
are raised and the bare thighs show as it speeds along
over the ground, skimming the air. On a charge, the
wings are outspread, and the head and neck are held
down. It can frighten a horse, and when angry will
attack a man upon horseback. The American ostrich has

257

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

three toes, while the African has two. Its foot is large
and powerful.

The American ostrich is smaller than the African
and its feathers do not compare with those of the latter,
although they are gathered and sold. | have seen some
made into rugs. They are likewise used for fly brushes
and feather dusters. The plumes of the male are some-
times combined with the African feathers for hats and
bonnets. The feathers are of different colours, according
to the parts of the body. Some are of rich brown and
some black, but most of them are gray or a dirty white.

The ostriches of Patagonia and the pampas move about
in flocks, each consisting of a cock and a number of hens.
Every cock has his own hens, and will fight to the death
any other cock that comes near them. The cock is a sort
of sultan and the hens seem to be the ladies of the harem,
who do his bidding. They lay their eggs in one nest, each
hen giving her share, until fifty eggs may be there in a
single hole in the sand. When the tale is complete the cock
takes charge and sits on the eggs, relieved now and then
by a hen, as his lordship directs. He has to keep sitting
for five or six weeks before the chicks hatch.

Some of the ostrich eggs weigh a pound and a half, and
it is not uncommon to have one served as an omelette
when one stops over night in camp. The cock objects to
having any one touch the eggs, and if they are disturbed he
will leave that nest and start another.

I have heard a number of queer stories about how the
cock raises his young. One of them tells how the first
meal is gathered from an egg placed on the sand apart
from the setting and several yards from the nest. The
egg remains in the sun until the ostrich chicks coine, by

258

Numbers of small herds of guanaco are found in Patagonia, where the
Indians hunt them for food and their skins. Before sheep were introduced
into Argentina, the long, soft hair of the guanacos was used for wool.

The Andean condor, highest flying bird in the world, has its nest two or
three miles above the sea. It is really a vulture, and neither in appearance
nor habits resembles the American eagle with which it is often compared.

Sheep can be raised on most of the land of southern Argentina though
the pasturage 1s largely bushes and scanty grass. Some sections under
irrigation are producing wheat and alfalfa.

THE CONDOR AND THE OSTRICH

which time it is rotten. When the little chicks appear,
the father goes to the egg and breaks it. It gives forth a
horrible smell, which attracts the flies for miles around.
The little ones eat the flies, and thus have their first meal.
The story is so interesting that I trust it is true!

The father also assumes care of the young ostrich brood.
He calls them to him with a peculiar booming sound to
which the babies reply with a chirp. He keeps watch over
them, and shows fight if they are disturbed. At such
times he will charge a dog or a man upon horseback, and
if he can knock down his enemy he will kick and bite him.
His kick is terrible, being sometimes strong enough to kill
adogoraman. Of late some of the estancieros have been
introducing the African ostrich, which thrives well.

259

CHAPTER XXXVI
THE NATIONAL SUGAR BOWL

UCUMAN, the smallest province of the Argen-

tine, is tucked away between the almost unknown

Chaco and the seldom-visited Andes district.

It is more thickly populated than any other
part of the republic. This is only comparative, however,
and merely shows how scattered is the population of the
whole land outside the cities. Three quarters of Tucuman
is mountainous and its density of population is in the
irrigated section around the city of the same name. Half
of the cultivated land is planted in sugar cane, and of the
whole sugar production of Argentina this province alone
supplies about eighty-five per cent. There is plenty of
land farther north suitable for the purpose but it has only
recently been put under cultivation. In Tucuman the
local government, backed by the national authorities, has
experiment stations and farms not only for the improve-
ment of the sugar-cane output, but to encourage diversi-
fied crops. Once in a great while frosts occur severe
enough to injure the cane, and a few such experiences
have convinced the farmers that it is well not to have all
their eggs in one basket.

Two thirds of the sugar mills of the country are in the
province of Tucuman, so that it is in very fact Argentina’s
sugar bowl. The industry has expanded with the in-
crease of demand from a growing population, and the

260

THE NATIONAL SUGAR BOWL

product is used entirely for home consumption. If the
crop falls short, sugar is imported, but the government
protects the infant industry by a duty on foreign sugars.

The Jesuits inaugurated sugar growing in Argentina as
they did so much of its productive development, but when
they were expelled their lessons were forgotten, and not
until 1840 was there again a sugar mill intheland. It was
more than a generation later before there was any modern
machinery or systematic production. The native cane
has been superseded by a Java variety which yields three
times as much per acre under the best conditions, and is
certain to be twice as productive.

The capital and business centre of the province is the
city of Tucuman, numbering ninety thousand inhabitants.
It is one of the historic towns of.the republic. In Buenos
Aires was proclaimed Argentina’s declaration of in-
dependence of Spain in 1810, and after years of fighting it
was in Tucuman that the treaty of peace was signed and
independence secured, July 9, 1816. The little cottage
in which this event took place, ‘‘Casa Independencia,”’
has been piously kept as a historic relic, but has been
enclosed within a large and impressive modern edifice. One
is expected to gaze with reverence on the chair occupied
by the first president of the republic and at the bare room
where the first congress assembled.

The old city has been much modernized. It claims,
with Cérdoba, the distinction of having much of the real
old Spanish aristocracy of the country, and as a logical
corollary boasts that its women are the most beautiful in
South America. At the hour of evening promenade the
throngs sauntering among the orange trees of the plaza
or studying shop windows are much more distinctively

261

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

Spanish than are the crowds of Buenos Aires or Mar
del Plata.

The labourers in the cane fields are mainly native
Indians or half-breeds. As elsewhere, whole families
work together at the harvest time. The man, armed with
a great knife almost like a butcher’s chopper, cuts off the
stalk taller than himself near the root, swings it in the air,
slashes off the leaves, and tosses it into the heap which the
women and children gather up and carry to the wagons.
At the mill the usual process is followed, the first machine
squeezing out from these stalks the muddy-looking juice
which is then cooked down and afterward treated with
centrifugal motion in hot steel cups. The product, which
looks at this stage like brown sand, needs more heat and
refining processes to become white.

Nothing yields a quicker return for capital invested than
sugar growing on a large scale. In Tucuman, after the
land is cleared and irrigation is provided, the first crop
pays. For three or four years the roots will produce well,
and then there must be a gradual replanting to ensure a
steady yield. Careful weeding is necessary and there are
the contingencies of a locust visitation or a frost, but these
are rare. Until a railroad connected Tucuman with the
rest of Argentina, sugar growing was limited to the local
needs, but as soon as it became possible to trade in the
product the industry grew by leaps and bounds. The
discovery of gold could scarcely have caused more activity
in the hitherto sleeping town. People from all sections
and all professions flocked to Tucuman to make their
fortunes in sugar, and every other form of production was
neglected. The sugar industry is still making great prog-
ress.

262

The Plaza Independencia in Tucuman takes its name from the tact
that here in 1816 representatives of the provinces declared Argentina free
from Spain. With Cordoba it is a centre for the descendants of the old
Spanish aristocracy of colonial days.

The forest Indians of Corrientes province cannot be induced to do lum-
bering, but are being persuaded by the missionaries to raise corn and
bananas. They sometimes work in the sugar harvest in the western part
of the province.

THE NATIONAL SUGAR BOWL

Argentine cotton might be made of recognized value in
the world market, though it would require not only capital
but scientific management, trained labour, and patient
waiting to put the country on the map as a cotton pro-
ducer. Money can be made more quickly and easily in
the long-established lines. The questionof suitable labour
would be especially difficult to meet. Cotton has been
successfully grown in the Rio de la Plata region, but the
natives thought themselves imposed upon unless they
were paid tremendous wages, because the work of picking
seemed to them extremely hard and required much more
care and steady application than they were capable of
giving.

The fibre of Argentine cotton is considered of good
grade, and the seeds yield an unusual amount of oil, but
the cotton grower of to-day must be scientific and pro-
gressive to produce an article that will compete with the
immensely improved varieties from the United States
and Egypt.

Tobacco is another staple product which Argentina
might grow in greater abundance for her own consumption.
It has been grown from very early times, chiefly in the
provinces of Tucuman, Salta, and Corrientes, but never
on a large scale. As the Argentine leaf is rather coarse,
the better qualities of cigars and cigarettes come from
other countries, but in a country with every natural
advantage it would seem that the six million dollars or
more spent on importing this luxury might be kept at
home.

It is rather surprising, likewise, to be told that Argentina
imports large quantities of rice. A country of so many
rivers has undoubtedly great tracts of land naturally

263

THEA TAD OF THEVA EMISr i RRis

suitable for rice cultivation or easily made so. It 1s
equally surprising to learn that the rice imported comes
mainly from Italy, with some from the United States.
The Argentineans are and always have been a meat-eating
people and the cereals they produce are largely for export,
but of late years the sale of meat products has been so prof-
itable that the people are beginning to acquire the habit of
eating more vegetable food. The Italian element nat-
urally brings its racial custom of using meat sparingly, and
in consequence there is said to be a demand for rice which
is not yet met by the domestic supply.

The World War taught all nations the wisdom of self-
dependence so far as possible in the matter of foodstuffs
and raw materials for industries. There are such great
natural diversities in climate and soil that no country can
in this day become a hermit nation and continue to thrive,
but a country so blessed by Nature as the Argentine will
always stand as a creditor nation in respect to a large
share of the necessaries of life.

It is a commentary on the motive of Spanish explora-
tion and conquest that no land they discovered or colon-
ized was considered of real value unless it gave promise
of yielding gold or silver. All through the northern
parts of South America they called each new region a
land of gold, and the great river below Brazil they appear
to have called La Plata in the hope that it would lead them
to a land of silver. The hope was destined to bitter
disappointment, but the name was firmly fixed, and when
the South American countries achieved independence
from Spain a large number of provinces were united under
the name of the Republic of La Plata. For fifty years
they were torn by local factions, the inland provinces

264

THE NATIONAL SUGAR BOWL

united only by a common jealousy of Buenos Aires and its
supremacy. Just about the beginning of our Civil War
the provinces finally split into the two republics of Uru-
guay and Argentina. The group of states known as
Argentina still wished to keep its silvery name and formed
the Argentine Republic.

If the Spaniards had only realized it, here were gold and
silver aplenty to be had with comparatively little effort
from this great, fertile country!

265

CHAPTER XXXVII
LAND BARONS AT THE SEASIDE

AR DEL PLATA is the Palm Beach, the New-
port, and the Atlantic City of this part of the
world. It is two hundred and forty miles
south of Buenos Aires on one of the finest ocean

strands on the globe. The city lies in a little valley, with
the high ground all around it covered with magnificent
villas. A wide boulevard commands ocean views for
many miles. The town has fine houses, magnificent hotels,
and a club that cost a million dollars. There are ex-
tensive golf grounds, a race course where races are
run almost daily, and an open camp where pigeon shoot-
ing is practised. At the various clubs are tables for
roulette and other gambling games, while in the Casino
one may lose or win a small fortune if he cares to bet on
the turn of the wheel.

The town is not at all like any of our seaside resorts, and
we might copy many of its arrangements to good ad-
vantage. It is like a series of palaces. ‘‘The Rambla,”
a wide promenade upon which the people stroll back and
forth, is of artificial stone built in the lines of an ancient
Greek temple with an esplanade for about a mile around
the chief bathing quarter. The temple is perhaps thirty
or forty feet high. It is a combination of Moorish and
Grecian architecture and rises in the shape of a half moon
around a stretch of beautiful sand. The entrance of stone,

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LAND BARONS AT THE SEASIDE

upheld by stone columns, is magnificent, and through a
grove of columns one passes on to the esplanade high
above the beach. It is very wide and is bordered by a
stone balustrade fit for the palace of a king, quite unlike
the board walks of Atlantic City or Asbury Park, which
have along them a jumble of buildings both mean and
splendid.

At the rear of the Rambla is a long, arcaded structure
about fifteen feet wide backed by the stores. It is
paved with porcelain tiles and extends around the whole
esplanade from one end to the other. The esplanade out-
side is thirty or forty feet wide. At the ends of the
arcades and in the middle are mosque-like domes of
stained glass that blaze with electric lights during the
evening. In front of the stores is another roofed
promenade upheld by magnificent columns. Fronting
upon this are the plate-glass windows of the shops, which
compare favourably with the best in Paris, New York, or
London. Walking along the corridor is like going through
the treasure vaults of a king. I doubt whether there is a
richer place upon earth, in proportion to its population,
than this little city. Most of its inhabitants are million-
aire Argentineans, including many of the rich estancieros.

If you could see the shops in the Rambla it would
remove from your mind any idea that South America is a
part of the backwoods of the world, and, therefore, a
market for the scrap and waste of factories in the United
States. It would show you that the people demand the
best of everything and that they have the money to pay
for what they want. In these shops are exhibited the
latest models of fashion from Paris. Inthe jewellery shops
are diamonds and pearls so finely set that a single orna-

207

THE PAILSOR THEVHENMISPR ERE

ment costs a king’s ransom. [| have never seen more
magnificent jewellery. In one window are displayed
diamond tiaras; in another there are solitaires as big as
my thumb nail, and iridescent pearls twice the size of
marrowfat peas. There are emeralds and rubies of
wonderful beauty and many new and artistic combina-
tions of precious stones. There are collars of emeralds
and diamonds in which the emeralds form the central row
with diamonds of pure water above and below. There are
similar collars of sapphires and rubies, and marvellous
diamond knots and bracelets. The shops of this kind on
the Rambla are nearly all branches of the large jewellery
houses of Buenos Aires, Paris, and London.

The confectioners display candy in caskets so beauti-
fully inlaid that one may give his sweeetheart a present
worth many dollars, though the contents are simply
sweets. Some of the bon bons are imported from Paris,
and the boxes are of ivory, of embossed leather work, and
of satin and silk.

Even ordinary things are so put up that they cost a great
deal. There are no ‘“‘cheap John”’ shops with pinchbeck
jewellery such as one finds at Atlantic City. The goods are
for the rich, to whom price is no consideration. There are
no marked prices in any of the shops, and you are ex-
pected to pay what is asked. Everything is high, but the
purses of the visitors are long.

’ Walking along the Rambla one looks over the billows
of the southern Atlantic rolling in. Down on the beach
are hundreds of booths roofed with canvas. These are
filled with people who sit and chat and have tea parties
in sight of the surf. There are children playing outside,
and in the ocean are bathers by hundreds. Indeed, the

268

LAND BARONS AT THE SEASIDE

views on the beach are not very different from those of our
seashore resorts. Both sexes go bathing together. In
this land the people are devoted to pleasure. They get
their fun, however, in a more refined way than many of our
people do. Mar del Plata has none of the freakish
costumes or over-dressing of our seaside places. The
bathing suits are usually black or dark blue, and modest
in cut. There is no conspicuous dressing either on the
promenade or on the beach, and as a rule the groups are
either family parties or composed of only one sex.

The dressing rooms are under the esplanade, and the
bathers walk through the crowds in the tents down to the
ocean. Along the shore are racks of towels on which the
swimmer wipes off his face, arms, and feet when he comes
out. The usual bathing hours are from ten to twelve in
the morning. In the afternoon you seldom see any one
in the water, but at that time and in the evening many are
strolling up and down the Rambla, anxious to show their
fine clothes.

The crowds are worth seeing. I know of no place where
one can meet so many fine-looking, well-dressed people at
one time. The men look as though they had just come
from the haberdasher’s shop; the women wear Paris gowns,
and there are scores of dresses with prices in three figures.
There are hats that would be cheap at fifty dollars apiece,
under which one may see jewels in quantity. These
Argentine girls know how to wear good clothes, and most
of them are wonderfully beautiful. They have dark
liquid eyes, long black hair, and clear, creamy complexions.
Most of them are tall and dignified, and they know how to
walk. They are not bashful or backward, neither are they
immodest, but they seem to be perfectly sure of themselves

269

THE TAIL, OF THE HEMISPHERE:

and able to hold their own under all circumstances. , Many
of them have been educated in Europe, and in culture and
bearing they would easily take front rank anywhere in the
world.

The older people run to fat. There are gouty old men
and plump dowagers who, if sold at their weight in gold,
would need a Croesus for buyer. The flesh of the older
women lacks solidity, and their faces are pasty. They
look as though if one pressed a thumb into them the dent
would stay, as in putty.

The girls of the Argentine do not object to having their
photographs taken. Indeed, buying snapshots of one’s
self and friends is a favourite pastime on the Rambla.
There are a_ half-dozen photographers who set their
cameras so that they can take pictures of the crowd as it
passes. Their snapshots of individuals and groups are
displayed in the windows next day. One can look overa
whole window containing several hundred such pictures
of postcard size, and above them read the date on which
they were taken. A young man can buy a picture of his
sweetheart, or of any girl he would like for a sweetheart,
for forty-five cents, and a dozen of himself for eight
Argentine dollars. The photographing is done on specula-
tion, the idea being that when a visitor sees a photograph
of himself or his friends he will order it.

The chief hours for strolling about the Rambla are just
before breakfast and after dinner. By breakfast I mean
the midday meal at about one o’clock. From eleven to
one the esplanade is filled with hundreds of the best class
of the Argentineans. The girls usually walk in groups and
the young men by themselves.

Now and then one sees a young dandy strutting along

270

Like the United States, Argentina offers the most varied scenery, from
the tropical landscapes of Corrientes to the chill steppes of Patagonia,
or the flat prairies of the east and the giant peaks of the west.

Mar del Plata is the Palm Beach and Atlantic City of the Argentine.
Its Rambla, or promenade, is far finer than any American boardwalk and
is lined with shops displaying Paris models and princely jewels.

LAND BARONS AT THE SEASIDE

looking as though he owned the whole Argentine Republic,
and behind him, perhaps, a young married couple who
have come to celebrate their honeymoon at the shore.
There are many middle-aged men, all carefully dressed,
moving along in groups, and now and then a family, or
young girls with their brothers and cousins. At the same
time the seats on the esplanade are filled with parties
chatting and other parties drinking tea or enjoying the
sights of the beach. The crowd is more like a great
family than the stiff and staid strollers at our resorts.
The people seem to know each other.

The evening scenes are more beautiful than those of the
morning. Mar del Plata at night is one of the gayest
places in the world. The great hotel is ablaze with
eléctricity and the Rambla is glorious. Its wide esplanade
has long rows of electric lights resting like balls of fire upon
the bronze columns of the balustrade. The tearooms and
the promenade are crowded with people sitting about
tables. The esplanade is thronged with people strolling
back and forth, and the lights from the roofs of the arcade
make it as light as day. Indeed, there are no such seaside
surroundings anywhere else in the world. It makes one
think of what Pompeii must have been at the height of its
glory. It is more like an ancient Greek temple than a part
of one of the newest of the new countries of South America.

The hotel life is interesting. The Bristol, where | am
staying, is the most famous seaside hotel of the Argentine, —
with over seven hundred rooms, and dining room and
parlours so large that they would cover at least half an
acre. The hotel is built in the shape of a half moon facing
the Rambla. The front is walled with glass, and there is
a wide promenade under cover, which at night is filled

271

THE TAIL OF THE HEMISPHERE

with gaily dressed people. There are dances in the ball-
room, where a gypsy band plays. One may have his
dinner as early as eight o’clock, but he will find few at the
tables before nine, and they do not finish dining until ten.
The men all wear evening dress, while most of the women
are in low-necked gowns, although many also wear hats.

I was surprised at the number of families, and more
surprised when I thought of the cost of this life. This is a
resort of the rich, or of those who are so anxious to appear
so that they will starve half a year to spend a month here in
style. As the prices at the hotel are ten dollars a day and
upward per person the estanciero with a family knows
that it costs him more than the price of a fat steer for
every day he stays. I pay twenty dollars a day for my-
self and my stenographer, a young man of twenty. We
have a double-bedded room without bath, and all our
water is brought to us in a pitcher. The furniture of the
room would not sell for more than fifty dollars if put up at
auction in Washington. Indeed, I have ‘“‘to pay through
the nose,” as the Englishman says.

This is only one instance of the high prices of the Ar-
gentine Republic, especially of the prices at this seaside
resort. Nearly everything is imported, and if any com-
ment is made the merchants will talk about the heavy
freight rates and the duties. Shaving soap is doubled in
price, and safety razors are away out of sight. Photo-
graphs are especially high. An ordinary eight-by-ten
print, which one can buy almost anywhere in the world
for twenty-five cents, costs here two dollars and a half, and
postcard photographs cost forty cents. Papers which
sell for a nickel in the United States cost twenty-five cents
at Mar del Plata, and a twenty-five-cent magazine costs

272

LAND BARONS AT THE SEASIDE

half a dollar. The common cab fare is fifty cents, but the
automobile taxicabs are comparatively cheap.

All service is high. Shaves and hair-cuts are so ex-
pensive that it seems to me they charge by the hair, and |
have just paid a manicure a rate equal to twenty-five
cents for each nail on my hands. As I had been travelling
on the estancias, my fingernails were so rough and stained
that I asked the hotel porter to send me a manicure girl. He
replied that there were few in the Argentine and, besides,
it was hardly proper for a girl to hold a man’s hand. He
added, however, that there were men who made manicur-
ing a profession, and that he would order one to come to
the hotel. In due time came the manicure man. He was
half an hour on the job, at the end of which he charged me
five Argentine paper dollars, equal to about two dollars
and a half of our money. The same service in Boston,
Philadelphia, or Washington would have cost just fifty
cents.

Last evening | strolled into the Casino and watched the
gambling. Two tables were going, and one hundred men
and women were sitting about them with great piles of
chips before them. The chips were mother-of-pearl of
different colours. They ranged in value from five to one
hundred dollars, and I could see that a thousand dollars
or so changed hands at every shuffle of the cards. The
croupiers, dressed in black, and as sober-looking as par-
sons, announced the results in a singsong way that gave no
indication of the amount staked on the throw, and the
people took their losses and gains without demonstration.
There are other gambling rooms at the different clubs; in
fact, high play is a sort of national pastime of the Argentin-
eans.

273

CHAPTER XXXVIII
ARGENTINE RAILWAYS

T MAY seem strange to those who think of the Ar-
gentine as a wild pasture land with scattered grain
fields to learn that it has twenty-two thousand miles
of railroad. Argentina has almost one thirtieth of

the railway tracks of the world. Its mileage is equal to
one tenth that of all Europe and more than all the rail-
ways of Africa. Brazil is three times as big as Argentina,
but it has only two thirds as much track, and Chile, with
its longitudinal system, has a railway mileage of only about
five thousand miles. The railways of Argentina if joined
end to end would go seven times across the United States
from ocean to ocean, and multiplied by twelve would
surpass the mileage of the United States, which has by far
the greatest railroad system in the world.

Notwithstanding this the Argentine railways are merely

in their infancy. Most of them are long trunk lines run-
ning from one end of the country to the other. The towns
are far apart, and one may ride for miles without seeing a
house. A large part of Argentina is pasture land, which
will some day be cut up into small farms and intensively
cultivated and which, some day, too, will be gridironed
with tracks like the prairie lands of the United States.

The railway traffic is necessarily small in proportion to

the area; but nevertheless the freight carried mounts up to
millions of tons. Most of it is made up of food products

274

ARGENTINE RAILWAYS

going to market, and there is little traffic between cities
and in the distribution of manufactured goods such as we
have in the United States. Buenos Aires is the great rail-
road centre. The volume of the traffic may be gauged by
the fact that more than five hundred passenger trains go
out of the city every day. All the Argentine railroads
together carry forty million tons of freight a year and
about one hundred million passengers.

Most of the railways belong to British investors. They
have put something like one thousand million dollars into
such properties, and their roads are paying dividends of
six per cent. a year and upward. Many of them were
built upon a guarantee from the government of seven per
cent., and they have received other favours in concessions
and remission of duties. All railway materials come in
free, and the government is encouraging the building of
new roads and the extension of old ones. Some of the
suburban lines have been electrified, among them those of
the Central Argentine Railway Company, which carry
something like fifteen million passengers a year.

One of the largest railroad systems is the Buenos Aires
Great Southern, connecting the capital with some of the
best lands of the Argentine, going south to Bahia Blanca,
and tapping a large part of southern Argentina. This
road has a capitalization of two hundred and fifty million
dollars and a net income of about fifteen million dollars.

The Southern railway is now carrying six or seven
millions of live stock a year. About one half of all the
cattle that go to the freezing establishments come from
the south. It has also a valuable summer-resort traffic.
It has the chief line-from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata,
the fashionable seaside city of Argentina, about two

275

THESDAID OF (THESHEMISPHERE

hundred and fifty miles away. During the season there
are afternoon express trains with parlour cars only and
three trains of sleeping cars that run nightly. One has to
engage his sleeping accommodations some time in advance.
The rates of travel are high, as is everything connected
with the town of Mar del Plata.

The Buenos Aires and Pacific railway is connected with
the trunk line which crosses the Andes from ocean to ocean.
It takes passengers from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso, a
distance of nearly nine hundred miles. The Chilean part
of the line is short, about seven hundred miles of the trip
across the continent being on Argentine territory.

The Western railway has constructed two tube lines
which land passengers right in the heart of Buenos Aires.
In the beauty of their equipment these tubes are superior
to anything we have in New York, and in efficiency they
are fully equal to any tube lines of the world. In addition,
a tube has been made for freight trains. This passes under
the Avenida de Mayo to the plaza of that name, and then
goes under the Calle Rivadavia and other streets, serving
the business parts of the city.

Another important railway of Argentina is the Central.
This has a capitalization of over a quarter of a million, and
its gross earnings are something like fifty million dollars a
year. It isa part of the system crossing the continent to
Antofagasta in Chile. The Central has the highest gross
earnings per mile of any line in Argentina, and pays divi-
dends of six per cent.

The railways of Argentina are, generally, well built. The
most common gauge Is five and one half feet, but there are
seven thousand miles of meter-gauge track. The broad
gauge originated from the fact that the first line in the

276

ARGENTINE RAILWAYS

country was built to fit an English locomotive whose
wheels were five and one half feet apart. Most of the
roads have been kept at that extraordinary width. Our
roads are four feet eight and one half inches wide, or what
is known as the standard gauge. The Argentine railways
are ballasted with earth or clay.

The question of ties is important, since there are no trees
on the great pampas. At first steel was used in laying the
railroad tracks. Later the hardwoods of the Paran4 and
Paraguay rivers were tried. These woods will not float,
and some are so heavy that a single tie will weigh two
hundred pounds, and so tough that spikes cannot be
driven into them. Holes have to be bored for the spikes
before the rails can be fastened. The quebracho, meaning
“axe-breaker,”’ has been generally adopted for use as ties
in all parts of Argentina. Besides its weight and hardness,
it has the further advantage of not rotting when set in
the ground, while it petrifies under water. Quantities
of this wood are sent to the United States for use in
tanneries.

Railroad building on the pampas is comparatively
cheap. The country is so flat that a hundred miles
of road-bed often needs but little grading. This is
also true of parts of Patagonia, but there the dust storms
are liable to cover the tracks, stopping the cars. The rail-
roads use dust scrapers as we use snow ploughs. During
a storm of a few years ago it took two thousand men to
clear the track of one line.

I like railway travelling in the Argentine. The fares
are higher than those of our country, but the cars are good
* and exceedingly comfortable. The seats are wider than
ours, and those of the first class are upholstered in leather.

277

THE TAI OF THE -TENisEnEehis

There are also chair cars and special sleeping compart-
ments. On nearly every train tea is served in the after-
noon. Most of the cars serve a table-d’héte dinner at
noon, with soup, fish, stewed chicken, roast beef with
vegetables, and ice-cream, cheese, fruit, and coffee.

The compartment sleeping cars are so arranged that one
has all the advantages of the drawing room of our Pullman
coaches. If he is alone he can order the upper berth made
up and have a good place to lie down during the day, and
at the same time he has the seclusion of a private room.
On some trains there is a sleeping car reserved for ladies,
and on all the cars there are special compartments for
smoking.

The trains usually carry one hundred and ten pounds of
baggage free on each ticket, all additional weight being
charged for at high prices. As I usually carry several
trunks, my extra baggage has sometimes cost almost as
much as my ticket. The great objection to some trains is
the lack of heating apparatus during the long winter
journeys, when the thermometer falls and the high winds
increase the cold.

The two chief sources of Argentine traffic are live stock
and grain. At almost any time of the year one may see
long trains of cattle and sheep moving across the country.
The cattle cars are better than ours. They open at the
ends instead of at the sides, so that the cattle can be
driven through the cars in single file from one end of the
train to the other. This enables the stock to be loaded in
a much shorter time than with us. The cattle are started in
at oneend. As soon as the first car is filled, the platform
between it and the next car is raised and the second is
filled; then the platform at the end of that is raised, and so

278

The Argentine women are beautiful, with dark, liquid eyes, long black
hair, and creamy complexions. They are seen at their best among the
smartly dressed throngs at Mar del Plata, the famous seaside resort.

Except at the ports, Argentina has not the equal of our system of grain
elevators. In the country thousands of bushels of grain in sacks are often
piled beside the railroad tracks to await shipment,

ARGENTINE RAILWAYS

on. The unloading is equally simple. Some of the cars
are double-deckers, so that many thousand animals may
be carried in a train of ordinary length. Grain is usually
carried in bags, and a great deal goes in open freight cars
covered with tarpaulins to keep off the rain.

One of the big expenses in grain export is getting the
product to the railroads. Most of it is carried upon
bullock carts hauled by sixteen or twenty-four animals.
The average wagon freight rate for comparatively short
distances is a cent and a half per mile per hundredweight,
so that if a man’s farm is ten miles from a station, it costs
him fifteen cents per hundredweight to get his grain there.
As a result of this, most of the wheat farms are close to the
railroads, the extra carting cost eating up the profits of
those far away.

The labour on the Argentine railways is largely foreign.
The roads are officered and managed by high-priced men
from other countries. Some of the superintendents and
general managers receive from twenty to thirty-five thou-
sand dollars per year. Farther down the scale the salaries
are rapidly reduced, and are seldom as large as those paid
in the United States. There is a labour union of engineérs
and firemen known as “La Fraternidad,” or the Brother-
hood. It is somewhat similar to the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Engineers of the United States, and has had
much to do with fixing railroad wages. More recently,
the conductors, brakemen, stationmen, telegraph operat-
ors, and even the track gangs have organized unions also.
The days are graduated by hours, the maximum working
day under express orders being twelve hours, although in
case of accidents or extraordinary occasions it may be
longer.

279

THE, TAIL OF *THE HEMISPHERE

The road construction is done mainly by Italian and
Spanish labour, the Italians doing most of the contract
work. The captain of a gang takes the contract by the
job or yard, and is responsible for the work of his men.
Upon one of the roads in Patagonia I saw twenty gangs of
ten men each laying tracks. They were paid so much per
mile. They carried their tents with them, and were
supplied with food from a provision car, a little grocery or
department store on wheels, fitted with shelves upon which
were bottles of liquor and packages of tobacco, groceries,
and clothes. It had a storekeeper, furnished by the com-
pany, and its goods were sold at reasonable rates. Among
the chief articles of consumption was the native wine,
without which the men will not work. This was soldat a
few cents a bottle.

280

CHAPTER XXXIX
BUILDING A NEW EMPIRE

AHIA BLANCA is the New Orleans of the
Argentine Republic. It is the metropolis of the
south and all of the country below, down to

‘ Cape Horn, lies tributary. Naturally it is a

great railroad centre with iron tracks going out like the
veins of a leaf, and the terminal point for half-a-dozen
projected routes across the Andes to Chile. The town has
grown from a village of less than two thousand to nearly
one hundred thousand, and promises to be one of the
greatest of South American ports. Sometimes called the
Liverpool of the Argentine, Bahia Blanca might be dubbed
the Minneapolis as well. Its imports and exports amount
to tens of millions of dollars a year and its flour mills and
grain elevators are among the wonders of the continent.

The elevators have electric conveyors by which the grain
can be loaded into a large number of steamers at one time,
and on the docks are electric cranes and other facilities for
handling cargoes. The town has one of the largest wool
warehouses of the world, covering more than ten acres,
with a storage capacity of over ten million pounds. There
are immigrant hotels and employment bureaus and other
facilities for developing the enormous area feeding to this
port.

Southern Argentina is an empire in itself. These
frontier lands at the lower end of the continent are to a

281

THES TAI OF “RHE "HEMISERER IE

large extent unexplored, and form an important part of the
backwoods of the Argentine. This great republic is so
little known to our people that it is difficult for them to
realize its extent. The country is as long as a straight line
drawn from New York to El Paso, or from London to
Constantinople, and at its widest part extends about as’
far as from New York to Chicago. The republic is di-
vided into fourteen states and ten territories, most of
which are comparable in area and resources to our largest
states. The territory of the Pampa is larger than Illinois,
Rio Negro is as big as Kansas, Neuquén is the size of
Virginia, and Chubut is larger than Utah. The territory
of Santa Cruz, down in Patagonia, is as big as Nevada, and
it would make two states the size of Illinois, while the
Argentine slice of the island of Tierra del Fuego is as
large as Massachusetts, and it has more good grazing
land.

The great region south of Bahia Blanca is one of the
chief areas of new development, and suggests our Far
West of a generation or so ago. It is being rapidly settled.
The Pampa Central, which lies west of the province of
Buenos Aires, in the southern part of which Bahia Blanca
is situated, once thought to be a desert, now has several
millions of acres under cultivation, including a million
acres of alfalfa and more than two million acres in wheat.
It has vast pasture lands on which cattle and horses are
“raised. The province produces much corn and oats, and
annually sells more than three million pounds of alfalfa
seed at a price averaging about fifty cents per pound.
The capital is Santa Rosa, a typical pampa town of seven
thousand inhabitants.

I have seen something of the territories of the Rio Negro

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BUILDING A NEW EMPIRE

and the Neuquén. The latter will be opened up by the
projected trunk lines, which will cross the continent from
Bahia Blanca to the Pacific, connecting this region with
lower Chile and making a short route from ocean to ocean.
The railroad has been built as far as the town of Neuquén,
the capital of the territory, and is being pushed toward the
Andes. This road passes through a country much like
Arizona and New Mexico. The land is practically a
desert and needs irrigation or dry farming to make it
thrive. The only cultivated portions are in the river
valleys of the Colorado and the Negro, and the principal
vegetation is sage brush and scrub. About the only
animals to be seen are guanacos and rabbits, and the chief
birds are ostriches, which are found almost everywhere in
the South American desert. Farther west there are many.
sheep in the valleys and on the mountains wherever the
many green spots occur.

Lake Nahuel Haupi, a beautiful sheet of water sur-
rounded by pine-covered hills, is one hundred and fifty
miles long and in some places more than fifteen hundred
feet deep. Its fiords are like those of Norway, and Mount
Tronador, with its snows and glaciers, is magnificent.
Undoubtedly this picturesque spot will become a tourist
resort. On one of the islands in the lake a wealthy family
has a colony cutting the enormous amount of valuable
timber, for which purpose they hold a ninety-nine-year
lease from the government.

Almost all southern Patagonia is more or less suited to
sheep raising. It is said that one can start on the mainland
north of the Strait of Magellan and travel to Buenos
_Aires,, stopping every night at the house of a farmer.
There are sheep stations wherever there is water, and the

283

THE TAIL OF FHE- HEMISPHERE

sheep feed on the bushes and the scanty grass of the
pampas.

Two of the most important territories of Argentine
Patagonia are Rio Negro and Chubut. Both of these
run from the boundary of Chile to the Atlantic and
both have rich lands that can be made available for farm-
ing by the Rio Negro and the Rio Chubut. Rio Negro is
especially fitted for fruit growing, and its irrigated vine-
yards produce more than a million pounds of grapes and
seventy-five thousand gallons of wine every year. The
Rio Negro country has an almost incredibly rich soil, but
these tempting regions are subject to ruinous floods al-
ternating with equally ruinous droughts. The irrigation
projects carried out by the railroads for the national
government have reclaimed and made productive a great
area, where every crop known to the Temperate Zone can
be grown in Californian abundance.

The Chubut territory has many rich valleys and its
mountain slopes are well fitted for grazing. It has sheep
and cattle by millions. Petroleum has been found but
has been little exploited. The government is taking up
the matter and has issued bonds to get the requisite capital
for developing the industry. The whole province has
long been considered an unprofitable member of the
Argentine family. Its early Welsh settlement was
Puritanic in its religious bigotry and more than Puritanic
-in its obstinate isolation. Only recently have these
people been willing to sell their land to any foreigner, by
which they meant Argentineans as well as people of other
nationalities, or to allow intermarriage with any but those
of their own or British blood. The estimated population
of Chubut is barely one person to ten square miles. The

284

BUILDING A NEW EMPIRE

capital of the territory is Rawson, situated on the coast
near the mouth of the River Chubut, and the chief port is
Madryn, on a little gulf not far from the peninsula Valdez.
Rawson has a weekly newspaper published in Welsh,
and the colonists speak Welsh, English, and Spanish.
The town has a football club and cricket and tennis
clubs.

The province of Santa Cruz, just below Chubut, and
extending down to the Strait of Magellan, produces mil-
lions of pounds of wool per annum, and there are packing
houses at the port of Gallegos, where hundreds of thou-
sands of sheep are slaughtered every year. It is one of the
largest territories of Argentina, bigger than our state of
Colorado. Its eastern boundary is the Atlantic and the
coast is bleak and desolate. The land rises from the ocean
and goes back to the Andes in a series of terraces. The
southern portion has many fenced ranches and numbers
of sheep. In the region of the Camerons alone there
are a quarter of a million, and there are many large
proprietors, mainly British, who seem to enjoy life
in this out-of-the-world spot. There are also large
sheep farms along the Rio Gallegos, one with one hun-
dred thousand acres and forty thousand sheep, and
another four times as large which has sixty thousand
sheep.

The sheep are generally of the Falkland and Romney
Marsh breeds, crossed with Merinos. They are big,
weighing from one hundred and forty to two hundred and
twenty pounds. Their wool is famous. It is short and
thick, protecting the animals against the cold winters.
Some of the fleeces weigh as much as eight and ten pounds.

Santa Cruz has three ports. One is Desado, at the

285

THE ADAILNOR GR EE EMISPRE Re

mouth of the Desado River, another, Santa Cruz, at the
mouth of the Chico River, and the third, Gallegos, at the
mouth of the Gallegos River. Santa Cruz has only a few
hundred houses built around a little harbour backed by
hills. The houses are of wood and sheet-iron and some
of them have been imported knockdown from Europe.
The place is the site of a fish hatchery modelled after those
of the United States, the fish being sent out to all parts of
the republic. Gallegos, the capital of this territory, was
named after the pilot on one of Magellan’s ships, which
called there at the time the Strait was discovered, about
A. D. 1520.

There are regular steamers from Bahia Blanca to the
Strait of Magellan, and once a month there is a vessel
to Tierra del Fuego. The ship skirts the eastern side
of the island and goes about its southern boundary
through Beagle Channel to Ushuaia. The voyage lasts
about forty-five days, and the fare is just about one
hundred dollars. The ships call at all of the ports along
the coast of Patagonia, and terminate the voyage at
Ushuaia.

Ushuaia is sixteen hundred and seventy miles south of
Buenos Aires, one hundred miles or so south of the Strait
of Magellan, and lies more than one thousand miles
farther south than the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of
Africa. The town is a convict settlement and has a
large prison for habitual criminals. The penitentiary has
a sawmill and also workshops for locksmiths, carpenters,
and shoemakers. It has a foundry, a printing office, and a
bakery, and there is a quarrynear by where building stone
is got out for shipment to the north. The prisoners do the
work of the community. They make the streets,

286

Argentina imports coal from the United States and England, but it costs
so much that many of her locomotives use the hard quebracho wood.
Some of the suburban lines running into Buenos Aires have been electrified.

New York is not more proud of the Pennsylvania or Grand Central
stations than is Buenos Aires of the Retiro. The British own most of the
Argentine railways, which have a mileage equal to one tenth that of all
Europe.

Ld

ac GS.

The mountain slopes of Neuquen Territory are covered with the ever-
green araucaria tree, thought to be suitable for paper-making. This region

will be opened up with the extension of the railroad over the Andes to
southern Chile,

BUILDING A NEW EMPIRE

build the houses, and operate a power plant which fur-
nishes electric lights.

This prison colony at Ushuaia is the southernmost
settlement of the world where any white men live the
year round. With it I end the story of my travels in
these lands that form The Tail of the Hemisphere.

THE END

287

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

MONG the general volumes on Latin America
in which information about both Chile and
Argentina may be found are: ‘The Ency-
clopzdia of Latin America,” edited by Marrion

Wilcox and George E. Reves, New York, 1917; ‘The
South American Year Book,” edited by C. S. Vesey
Brown, London; James Bryce’s “South America: Observa-
tions and Impressions,’ New York, 1912; and the “Argen-
tine Year Book,” Buenos Aires, which, though dealing
primarily with Argentina, also contains chapters on Uru-
guay, Paraguay, and Chile. The “Bulletin of the Pan
American Union,” published monthly in Washington,
D. C., is a valuable magazine source for facts about all
Latin-American countries. .

CHILE

“ Anuario General de Chile”’ (First Issue). Valparaiso, 1918.
Canto, J. “Chile.” London, 1912.
Etuiott, G. F. Scotr. “Chile: Its History and Development.”

London, 1907.

Exuiott, L. E. ‘Chile: Today and Tomorrow.” New York, 1922.
Koeset, W. H. ‘Modern Chile.” London, 1913.
Marttanb, F. J. G. “Chile: Its Land and People.”” London, 1914.
Mitts, G. J. “Chile.” New York, 1914.
Parker, W. E. “Chileans of Today.” New York, 1920.
Winter, N.O. ‘Chile and Her People of Today.” Boston, 1912.

ARGENTINA
Bunce, A. E. “Los problemas econémicos del presente.”” Buenos
Aires, 1920.

2890

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CLEMENCEAU, GeEorces. “South America Today.” London, 1912.

DeNIs, PIERRE, ‘“‘La République Argentine.” Paris, 1920.

Fraser, J. F. “The Amazing Argentine.” New York, 1914.

Gorpon, H. J. “Argentina and Uruguay.” London, 1917.

Hirst, W. A. “Argentina” (4th edition). London, 1914.

HureT, Jutes. “En Argentine” (2 vols.). Paris, 1913.

KoeBeEL, W. H. “Argentina, Past and Present.’”? London, IOI.

“The Great South Land.” London, 1910.

LARDEN, WALTER. “Argentine Plains and Andine Glaciers.” London,
IQII.

Martinez, A. B. “Baedeker of the Argentina Republic.” London,
1916.

Mitts, J.G. “Argentina.” London, 1915.

Parker, W. B. “Argentines of Today” (2 vols.). New York, 1920.

Ross, Gorpon. “Argentina and Uruguay.” New York, 1916.

SKOTTSBERG, CARL. “The Wilds of Patagonia.” London, 1911.

STEPHENS, Henry. “Illustrated Descriptive Argentina.” New
York, 1917.

TornguisT, E. “The Economic Development of the Argentine Re-
public in the Last Ffty Years.” Buenos Aires, 1910.

Winter, N.O. “Argentina and Her People of Today.” Boston, 1911.

Year Book of the City of Buenos Aires. Published annually by the
Municipality of Buenos Aires.

200

INDEX

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INDEX

Aconcagua, Mount, highest in the
New World, 143.

Aconcagua River, fed by glaciers, 140.

Alacaluf Indians of Strait of Magellan,
110.

Alfalfa, immense acreage of, in Argen-
tina, 155, 219.

Andes, most wonderful of the high-
lands, 8; crossed by transconti-
nental railroad, 139.

Antofagasta, gateway to the copper
and nitrate fields, 3; water supply
of, 9; exports from, 10.

Ants, a pest in Argentina, 248.

Araucanian Indians, the story of the,
79; customs in the household, 82;
missionary work among, 85.

Argentina, the grain fields, 156; ex-
port of food supplies to the United
States and Great Britain, 158;
comparison with the United States,
162; life of the working classes, 181;
educational system modelled after
that of the United States, 187; the
government of the Republic, 188;
educational system, 192; the press,
192; elaborate immigration pro-
visions, 195; foreign trade, and
opportunities for the United States,
203; banking on a large scale, 211;
beef and butter shipments to
American market, 224; export of
dairy products, 229; horse breeding
and racing, 232; wheat growing and
export, 239; production and ship-
ment of mutton, 249; railway
systems, 274.

Ascotan, Lake, largest known reser-
voir of borax, 7.

Armour & Co., packing houses at
Buenos Aires and La Plata, 224.

“Army of the Andes”, colossal granite
group at Mendoza, 152.

Automobiles, demand for in Chile, 31;
use of, limited in Argentina, 205.

Bahfa Blanca, southern metropolis of
Argentina, 281.

Banks, American, in Argentina, 210.

Beef, shipments of, from Argentina to
New York, 224.

Bethlehem Steel Company, iron de-
posits near Coquimbo, 26; efforts in
developing American trade with
west coast, 32; extent of ore proper-
ties, 33.

Boers, colony of, in Argentina, 201.

Bolivia, the high plateau of, 5.

Borax lakes of Chile, 7

Braden copper mines, largest in the
world, 33.

Buenos Aires, fastest-growing city of
the world, 164; one of the oldest in
the New World, 168; great amount
of shipping, 169; the city govern-
ment, 170; excessive taxes, 171;
high life of the city, 172; sports and
racing, 176; the cemeteries, 176;
high-class newspapers, 192.

Cape Froward, lowest point of conti-
nental land, 102.

Carancho, the bird pest of the sheep
Taiser, 257.

Cattle industry, growth of, in Argen-
tina, 222.

Chile, comparative length of, 23; area,
24; climate, 25; American trade, with
30; how the republic is governed,
40; the military, 51, 58; among the
people, 53; class distinctions, 55.

Chile Copper Company, mines at
Chuquicamata, 3, 33.

“Christ of the Andes,” the beautiful
statue on boundary between Chile
and Argentina, 145.

Chubut territory in Patagonia, rich-
ness of, 284.

Chuquicamata, copper mines of, 3,
33; building a modern town at,

34.

293

INDEX

Coal, the Lota mines near Concepcién,
76; demand for, in Argentina,
205.

Cog railroad on Transandine system,
142.

Collahuasi, richest copper mines in
South America, 9.

Colonists, no opportunity for Amer-
ican, 92.

Concepcién, metropolis of southern
Chile, 73.

Condor, the giant vulture, 256.

Corn, in Argentina, 156; as an export
crop, 160.

Corral, the port for Valdivia, 89.

Cotton, opportunity in growing of, in
Argentina, 263.

Cousino family, immense estate of the,
63; fortune founded on Lota coal
mines, 77; income from silver and
copper mines, 78.

Customs tariffs in Argentina, 209.

Dairy farms of Chile, 62, 63.

Dairy products, export
Argentina, 229.

Denoso hacienda, great dairy farm of,
63.

Drunkenness, among Chilean peasan-
try, 57.

of, from

Earthquakes, at Valparaiso, 18; at
Concepcion, 73.

Eastman, Don Thomas, large dairy of
near Valparaiso, 63.

Educational system of Argentina, 192.

Edwards, Augustin, stock farms of,
62.

Eucalyptus, nursery production of,
66, 68.

Eucalyptus forest, on San Juan
Estancia, 215.

Falkland Islands, history and their
sheep industry, 1209.

Farm lands, prices of, in Argentina,
202.

Farm machinery, mostly from the
United States, 92; demand for in
Argentina, 204.

Farming in central valley of Chile,

Forests, extensive, of southern Chile,
90; of Tierra del Fuego, 123.
Foreign settlements in Argentina, 201.

Foreign trade of Argentina, and op-
portunities for the United States,
203.

Fruit trees, production of nursery
stock on large scale, 66.

Fruits, possibilities of shipping to
United States markets, 65, 70, 149.

Gambling, public, in Argentina, 273.

Gaucho, the Argentine, 237.

Glaciers of Tierra del Fuego, 105.

German settlements in Brazil and
southern Chile, 87; colony in
Argentina, 201.

Gold mining in Tierra del Fuego,
123

Grace & Co., W. R., largest owners in
nitrate syndicate, 11; fleet of ships
for South American trade, 35;
business in exports and imports, 36;
their store at Valdivia, 88; build
tunnel through Andes, 145.

Grain fields of eastern Argentina, 157.

Grapes, culture of, at Mendoza, 148.

Guggenheim copper mines, near Anto-
fagasta, 3, 26, 33.

Hebrews, settlements of, in Argentina,
201.

Homesteading, little inducement for
Americans, 92, 199.

Horses, breeding of, in Argentina, 232;
racing, 233; origin of the Argentine
horse, 235.

Hotel prices in Argentina, 208.

Huanchaca, silver mines at, 9.

Immigration, elaborate provision for,
in Argentina, 195; the “swallow”
immigrant, 198; small inducement
for Americans, 199.

Inca Bridge, a natural formation in
the Andes, 144.

Indian tribes of Patagonia and Tierra
del Fuego, 110, 124.

Iquique, dependence upon nitrate
industry, 16,

Irrigation, in the central valley, 60,
61; the Mendoza River a valuable
source, 148; new projects in Argen-
tina, 207.

Italians, comprise one fourth of
Argentina’s population, 181, 183.

Izquierdo, Don Salvador, fruit king
of Chile, 65.

294

INDEX

Jesuit Church, Santiago, burning of,
“tan Caleb ei

Jews, colonization of, in Argentina,
201.

Jockey Club, of Buenos Aires, 233,
234.

Juan Fernandez Islands, visited, 26.

La Martona, world’s biggest butter
farm, 229.

La Paz, travelling from, to Oruro, 4.

La Prensa, palatial offices and public
henefactions, 193.

Labor organization, in Chile, 59; in
Argentina, 185.

Land-holding system,
Argentina, 200.

Live stock on San Juan estancia, 214,
252.

Live-stock shows,
Argentina, 221.
Locusts, a plague in Argentina, 244.
Lota, extensive coal mines at, 73, 76.
Lumber of Chile, of inferior quality,

_ 90.

evils of, in

interest in, in

Macul Hacienda, of the Cousino
family, 63.
Magellan, Strait of, the passage

through, 102.
Mar del Plata, leading seaside resort
of Argentina, 266, 275.
Meiggs, Henry, extensive
building in Chile, 100.
Mendoza, city of, an oasis of vine-
yards, 147.

Mendoza River, a silt carrier from
the Andes, 144.

Mercurio, chief of Santiago’s news-
papers, 45.

Mount Aconcagua, highest mountain
in the New World, 143.

Mutton, production of, in Argentina,

249.

railway

Newspapers of Chile, 45.

Nitrate deposits of Chile, value and
extent, 10; theory of origin, 12;
process of mining and refining, 13.

Nursery stock production on large
scale, 66.

Ona Indians, of Tierra del Fuego, 124.
Oruro, a thriving town, 6.
Oxen, use of as draft animals, 91.

Packing houses, American, at Buenos
Aires and La Plata, 224.

Pampas, travelling over the, 155;
development of, 282.

Parana River, wheat lands along the,
239.

Patagonia, southern, from the Strait
of Magellan, 104; agricultural possi-
bilities of, 162; development of,

284.

Pereyra estancia, a vast stock farm,
214.

Persimmons, being introduced into
Chile, 69.

Petroleum, industry to be developed
in Patagonia, 284.

Port Stanley, capital of Falkland
Islands, 136.

Puerto Montt, a city more German
than Chilean, 88; southern terminus
of railroad, 94.

Punta Arenas, southernmost city of
the world, 114.

Quebracho wood, used for railroad ties
throughout Argentina, 277.

Racing, at Santiago, 42; of great in-
terest in Argentina, 233.
Radio stations of Chile, an extensive
system of, 114.
Railroad material,
Chile, 32.

Railroads, the Longitudinal System,
94; government ownership not a
success, 95; privately owned roads
giving better service, 96; difliculties
of road building, 97; future develop-
ment, 08.

Railway systems of Argentina, 274.

Railway travel, in Argentina comfort-
able cars and good service, 277.

demand for in

Rhea, or South American ostrich,
ate Fate ; ;
Rice, opportunity in growing, in

Argentina, 264. ;
Rio Blanco, at beginning of cog rail-
road over Andes, 142. ‘
Rio Negro, rich lands of, in Patagonia,
284.

Robinson Crusoe’s Island, visit to,
20.

Rosario, the wheat port of Argentina,
239. /

Russians, colony of, in Argentina, 201,

205

INDEX

San Juan, famous estancia, visited,
214.

San Martin, commemorated by
colossal group at Mendoza, 152.

San Pedro and San Paulo, volcanoes
of: 7.

Santa Cruz, province of, the sheep
industry, 285.

Santa Lucfa, the mountain park of
Santiago, 37.

Santiago, the heart of Chile, 37; early-
closing practice of merchants, 89.
Sarmiento Glacier, Tierra del Fuego,

102, 105.
Seaside resort of Mar del Plata, 266,

275.

Selkirk, Alexander, monument to, on
Juan Fernandez Islands, 27.

Sheep, extent of the industry in
southern Chile, 116; in the Falk-
land Islands, 130; importance of the
industry in Argentina, 249; in
Patagonia, 285.

Siloli Spring, source of Antofagasta’s
water supply, 9.

Stock breeding on San Juan estancia,

Das
Suarez, Inés, the Joan of Arc of Chile,
80

Sugar production of Tucum4n, 260.

Swift & Co., packing houses at La
Plata, 224.

Swiss, colony of, in Argentina, 201.

Tierra del Fuego, glaciers of, 105;
sheep industry of, 117; the country
described, 121;

Tin mines, of Nyuni, Oruro, and
Potosi, 3.

Tobacco, opportunity in growing, in
Argentina, 263.

Toro, Don Santiago de, immense
estate of, 63.
Tower, Dr. Walter S., theory of

origin of nitrate deposits, 12. _

Trade with Chile, American, 30; some
mistakes in, 36.

Transandine route from coast to coast,
139; upkeep of road tremendous,
143; project originated by the
brothers Clark, 144.

Tucuman, sugar producing centre, 260

Ushuaia, a convict settlement, 286.
Uspallata Pass, highest point of trail
over Andes, 141, 144.

Valdivia, a city more German than
Chilean, 88

Valdivia, General, difficulties with the
Araucanian Indians, 80; death by
torture, 81.

Valparaiso, chief Pacific
South America, 18.

Vegetables, grown at Mendoza, 154.

Vina del Mar, chief summer resort of
the west coast, 22.

Vineyards in the central valley, 62;
at Mendoza, 147.

port of

Wheat, chief cereal of Chile, 91;
archaic methods of production, 92;
from the Parana section, 239.

Wheelwright, William, builds first
railroad in South America, 35, 99;
efforts to utilize coal deposits at
Concepci6n, 77; plans transandine
railway, 144.

Wine, production of, at Mendoza, 150.

Women, position of, in Argentina, 186.

Women workers: conductors on street
cars, 21; in office positions, 54.

Wool, production of, in Argentina,

249.

Yaghan Indians of Tierra del Fuego,
125, 126, 127.

Yankee enterprise on the west coast,
30.

206

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